The Three-Nine Line

by David Freed

  TWENTY-SIX

  Sunrise came officially at 0616 hours. I was up, showered, and on my way to the Rancho Bonita Municipal Airport a half hour before then—but not before tucking my two-inch Colt revolver into a side pocket of my flight bag. With all due respect to the Buddha and his preaching about passivity, nothing is quite as comforting as having a reliable firearm within easy reach when heading into harm’s way.

  Curled asleep atop the refrigerator, Kiddiot never budged as I left.

  The fog from the previous evening had lifted significantly by the time I parked my truck and got to the plane. I telephoned Flight Service and filed an instrument flight plan to the Monterey Regional Airport, a distance of about 190 miles, then did a walk-around inspection of the Duck, making sure all was airworthy. A squadron mate I’d flown with during Desert Storm told me once that there are only two things that can happen to a pilot. The first is that you’ll walk out to your aircraft one day knowing it’s your last flight. The other is that, one day, you’ll walk out to your airplane not knowing it’s your last flight. I hoped that this flight, as I always hoped, would not be the latter.

  Finding no major anomalies on the Duck, I climbed in, buckled up and, after receiving the necessary clearances from air traffic control, was soon ready to depart.

  “Winds variable at three,” the tower controller said in my ears. “Cessna Four Charlie Lima, cleared for takeoff, Runway two-six.”

  Feet off the brakes. Throttle to the firewall. One eye on the centerline, the other on the gauges. At fifty-five knots, I began smoothly pulling back on the yoke. The Duck raised his nose like a dog sniffing the air and, just like that, we were airborne. Almost immediately, we were enveloped in dark gray clouds.

  No matter how many times you do it, it’s an oddly exhilarating feeling that instant when you lose sight of the ground at the controls of a hurtling piece of machinery that can kill you faster than just about anything if you don’t keep a careful eye on your flight instruments. But on that morning, climbing out of Rancho Bonita at a respectable 800 feet per minute, I wasn’t in the coastal overcast very long. The layer quickly gave way to piercing sunshine, revealing the whole of the earth below enveloped in a soft blanket of white.

  Leveling off at 8,000 feet, I could see all the way from the Pacific, east to the Sierra Nevada and beyond. It was one of those mornings that make you feel good just to be alive.

  I hoped I’d still feel the same way after confronting Steve Cohen.

  V

  Del Monte Aviation, the executive air terminal at the Monterey airport on whose ramp I parked, catered to high-rolling corporate jets, but they couldn’t have been any more welcoming to me and my scruffy 172. The smiling line attendant, a freckled towhead who introduced himself as “Nick,” had the Duck’s wings tied down even before I opened my door. He offered me a ride in his golf cart to the terminal, which was less than one hundred meters away. I told him I could use the walk.

  “You need your windscreen washed or anything?”

  “That would be great, Nick. Thanks.” I tipped him five bucks, grabbed my flight bag out of the backseat, and headed inside.

  A muscular dude in black steel-toed jump boots, Levis, and a forest-green polo shirt was waiting for me with his hands on his hips. He bore more than a passing resemblance to the late actor Charles Bronson, right down to the flinty eyes.

  “You Logan?”

  “I am.”

  “Name’s Hersh. Any friend of Buzz’s.”

  “Nice to meet you, Hersh.”

  We shook hands. I told the friendly brunette behind the reception counter that I planned to be in Monterey most of the day and asked that my plane be refueled, then grabbed a couple of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies from a tray on the counter and followed Hersh out the automatic-opening door.

  Parked at the curb was a black Lincoln Navigator. Occupying the driver’s seat was a gum-chewing, light-skinned African American woman in her midthirties. She wore big round sunglasses. Her shoulder-length hair was dyed blonde and braided in beaded cornrows. A pistol protruded from underneath her untucked, blue-denim work shirt. The shirt was embroidered with butterflies.

  “This is Mercy,” Hersh said as I climbed into the front passenger seat. “She’s running this op.”

  She made no attempt to shake my hand. She didn’t even look at me. “You packing a gun, cowboy?”

  “Got a two-inch revolver in my bag.”

  “A snubby? Hell, man, that’s no gun. That’s a joke.”

  “So size does matter. Is that what you’re saying?”

  She didn’t smile. “I need to break out some ID.”

  I handed her my driver’s license. She studied it over the tops of her sunglasses. Her eyes were light green. Satisfied I was who I was supposed to be, she gave me back the license, put the Lincoln in drive, and merged into traffic.

  “When did you guys get in?” I asked.

  “Last night,” Hersh said from the backseat.

  “You based in San Francisco?”

  “That’s on a need-to-know basis,” Mercy said, cracking her gum, “and you don’t need to know.”

  “Well,” I said, “this has all the makings of a beautiful friendship.”

  Back in the day, operators didn’t treat each other with such brusqueness—those assigned to the same unit, anyway. But times change, I suppose, and so do people.

  They didn’t say anything else for the rest of the ride and neither did I.

  Our destination was an old motor lodge on Lighthouse Avenue in nearby Pacific Grove advertising “air-conditioning, free ice and HBO” on its marquis. The kind of motel you can rent by the hour, if that’s your thing. In room number four, a pierced and heavily tattooed carrot top in his midtwenties was watching a television cooking show. Feet up on the desk, Houston Rockets cap on backwards, he swiftly turned to point a short-barrel, pump-action shotgun at us as Hersh and I followed Mercy inside.

  “Blue, coming in,” she announced.

  The carrot top lowered the shotgun and returned his attention to the cooking show.

  “Turn off the TV, Byron,” Mercy told him.

  “I’m learning how to get the lumps out of my hollandaise sauce.”

  “Turn off the TV, Byron, now.”

  Byron sighed. “I was afraid you were gonna say that.” He reached over and hit the off button. “This the dude?”

  “This is him,” Hersh said.

  “Byron,” he said, leaning over and shaking my hand.

  “Logan.”

  “Pleasure.”

  “Let’s get this done, people,” Mercy said, taking off her shades. “We’re burning the taxpayers’ dough.”

  Hersh pulled the bedspread off one of the beds. Underneath it was an elaborate series of enlarged, eight by ten color photographs showing Monterey’s harbor and marina from various angles and elevations.

  “The subject’s boat is berthed here,” Mercy said, pointing it out on one of the photos. She pointed to another picture. “We’ve set up a two-man observation post on this unoccupied boat across from his slip, here. They’ve maintained eyes-on since zero seven thirty. The subject spends most of his time inside the boat’s cabin, comes out on deck every so often.”

  “Is he alone?” I asked.

  “Affirmative.”

  Mercy then proceeded to lay out an assault plan that nearly rivaled Normandy in its detail: one guy advancing from this position laying down a base of fire; another guy advancing from that position; a third guy to distract Cohen using flash-bangs; the others to rush and overpower him with their weapons locked and cocked.

  “This is what we old school types refer to as ‘overkill,’ ” I said. “You can employ security and overwatch tactics all you want, and that’s fine. You can talk all you want about establishing a base of fire, and that’s fine, too. What I’m going to do is walk in there, alone, and have a heart-to-heart with him. Steve Cohen’s a war hero, not a terrorist.”

  “Look,” Mercy said,
“no one’s saying the guy didn’t bleed for his country. But according to our records, that ‘hero’ has more handguns and rifles registered to his name than half the rural police departments in America. He’s also been arrested repeatedly for making violent threats, mostly to his neighbors. The only reason why he’s never been prosecuted is because of his distinguished service record. Were you aware of that?”

  “No.”

  “Are you aware that his wife committed suicide in 1985, and that he blamed the Vietnamese for it?”

  “He told me his wife left him.”

  “That’s one way to put it,” Byron said, trying not to chuckle.

  Mercy dug into a file folder and handed me a Veterans Affairs report that outlined Cohen’s domestic history. It described my former professor’s chronic depression, and how his wife, Margaret, bore the brunt of his emotional abuse until, one night, leaving the apartment she rented after they’d split, she drove to a park in downtown Colorado Springs and blew off the top of her head with one of the many handguns he kept in their house.

  I had no idea.

  Clearly Mercy and her team weren’t there to make nice. They’d convened in Monterey ostensibly to take Cohen into custody, the operative word being “ostensibly.” More realistically, their purpose was to take him out. What more elegant solution could there be? The late Capt. Virgil J. Stoneburner had already taken the fall for the death of Mr. Wonderful. What good could be gained by forcing another former prisoner of war to stand trial? This way, with Cohen dead, the trade agreement could go through without a hitch, and big business would make big money on both sides of the Pacific. The whole thing reeked.

  “Guilty or not, Cohen still deserves a fair trial,” I said. “I’m not going to stand by while some sniper puts a round in him if he happens to sneeze funny. Your team will stand down until I say otherwise.”

  “You have no say here, Logan,” she said, giving her gum a workout. “You’re here strictly as an observer. We do it my way, and if you don’t like my way, you can sit this one out. Find yourself a comfortable seat. Byron here will show you how to make hollandaise sauce.”

  “I would if you’d have let me finish watching my show,” Byron said.

  I walked outside and called Buzz.

  “Technically, she’s correct,” Buzz said. “She is in charge of the op.”

  “Look, I don’t know where you found this woman, but I’m telling you, she’s bad news.”

  “Mercy’s ex-FBI, eight years with the bureau’s Critical Incident Response Group. She’s good people.”

  “Maybe so, but this is the absolute wrong play, Buzz. You cap a seventy-five-year-old former POW for allegedly trying to resist arrest instead of talking him out, I guarantee you, by tomorrow morning, the president’s approval ratings’ll be in the toilet.”

  “Who said anything about capping him? All we’re doing is taking proper precautions before we take him into custody.”

  “Like hell. You forget, I’ve been on a few of these ops. I know how the game is played.”

  “That was then, Logan. Alpha’s long gone. We play by a different set of rules now.”

  “Look, you hired me to do a job. Let me do it. Give me ten minutes with Cohen. If I can’t get him to come out peacefully, then feel free to bring in the artillery. Buzz, you and I go way back. Let me do it my way. Just this once.”

  Silence on the other end. I could hear him exhale. Then he said, “Put Mercy on the goddamned line.”

  I walked back inside and held my phone out to her. She stopped her chewing, giving me one of those cold, if-looks-could-kill-you’d-be-a-corpse kind of stares, then took it.

  “Yeah?” She listened, trying to get a word in, but Buzz wouldn’t let her. After several futile attempts to defend her game plan, she caved. “Fine,” she said. “You’re the boss.”

  I was to be given ten minutes. One chance to make Cohen come quietly. If something bad happened in the process, like me getting shot, there would be no calling in local law enforcement, no cordoning off the marina and negotiating, waiting him out. Mercy and her people would move in with swift and deadly precision, neutralizing the threat to public safety.

  “Fair enough,” I said.

  “You might need these,” Byron said, handing me a silver pair of handcuffs.

  I shoved them into the front pocket of my jeans, extracted the revolver from my flight bag, and stuffed that into the back of my waistband, under my shirt. I hoped I wouldn’t have to use the weapon. I knew there was a distinct possibility that I might.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  The sun was out but the wind that spring morning was off the bay and had a bite to it that made me wish I’d brought along a jacket. In the kelp beds offshore, I watched two sea otters swimming and chasing each other, or whatever it is sea otters do. The air reeked of dead fish.

  Snuggled between John Steinbeck’s famous Fisherman’s Wharf and Monterey’s longer but lesser known Municipal Wharf, the marina where Steve Cohen berthed his sloop was a small, vibrant community unto itself. Here and there, weekend sailors in sweaters and Top-Siders were busy hosing off decks, repairing sails, coiling ropes, or just hanging out and chatting with each other. There appeared not to be a single ethnic minority among the sailors, nor anyone under retirement age.

  “What has twelve arms, twelve legs, and twelve eyes?” one old guy asked me as I strode past his boat on the way to Cohen’s slip, which was on the seaward end of the dock. He was sitting in a cheap, low-rise lawn chair and hoisting what I guessed was not his first margarita of the morning. His blue baseball cap said “Dubai Yacht Club.” The scar tissue and precancerous blotches on his ruddy face said he was no stranger to the dermatologist’s office.

  I played along with him. “I don’t know. What has twelve arms, twelve legs and twelve eyes?”

  “Twelve pirates!” he said, cracking himself up and sloshing his drink on the dock.

  I managed to smile and kept walking.

  What I don’t know about sailing vessels would fill volumes, but I knew enough to recognize that Steve Cohen’s boat was a beauty. Sleek and immaculately maintained, with elegant lines, she was neither big nor small, pretentious nor modest. Painted in cursive letters on the stern was her name: Great Escape. I noticed as I drew closer that the lower part of the hull was painted a glossy bluish green. There appeared to be no one on deck.

  “Colonel Cohen?”

  No response.

  Across the marina, I spotted Mercy’s Lincoln Navigator. She was aiming a camera out the driver’s window, pretending to take pictures of the ocean, but the lens was aimed at me. Nearby a pair of bearded, middle-aged men in Hawaiian shirts were doing the tourist thing, leaning against a railing, ostensibly admiring the view. One of them had a pair of binoculars. They, too, were focused in my direction.

  “Colonel? Hello? Ship ahoy?”

  Cohen suddenly emerged from below deck. He appeared startled to see me, if not alarmed.

  “Cadet Logan,” he said with a plastic smile, “what’re you doing here?” His hair was mussed and his clothes—a gray, Air Force Academy sweatshirt and a pair of baggy old khakis—were rumpled. He seemed to have aged considerably since I’d seen him last.

  “I was in the neighborhood and thought I’d take you up on your offer, come hang out. Gorgeous boat, Colonel. What do you call that paint color, anyway?” I said, pointing to the hull.

  “Aquamarine.”

  “That’s what I thought. Mind if I come aboard?”

  He shot a quick glance down the companionway ladder he’d just climbed, leading to the cabin below. “Actually, now’s not a good time. I’m square in the middle of something. Can you come back a bit later? We’ll go have lunch.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t do that, Colonel. I think you know why I’m here.”

  His plastic smile melted. “No, as a matter of fact, I’m afraid I don’t.”

  “It’s about Mr. Wonderful.”

  “The guard?”

  I nodded.r />
  Cohen forced another smile intended to mask his rising anxiety. “If you or whoever it is you’re working for are implying that I was involved in any way with what happened that night, I’m going to have to ask you to contact my attorney. Beyond that, I really have nothing to say. Now if you’ll excuse me.”

  I stepped off the dock and onto the boat, walking toward him. “What happened to Socrates, Colonel? Didn’t you tell me it’s not right to return an injury, no matter how much you’ve suffered from it?”

  “You’re trespassing, Mr. Logan,” he said, backing up and bracing himself on the tubular metal handrail leading below deck. “I can have you arrested.”

  “Colonel, listen to me, I’m trying to do you a solid here. The people I’m working with have a tactical team in place. They’re prepared to assault your boat, and they would love nothing more than to put a round in your head because that’s what they get paid to do. We need to talk, earnestly, and you need to do exactly what I tell you, or this day is going to end very badly for you.”

  He glanced about, looking for the snipers. “What makes you think I killed him?”

  “You’re the only one who speaks Vietnamese. Stoneburner and Halladay and Halladay’s grandson? None of them would’ve had any way of knowing where to find Mr. Wonderful that night.”

  “That’s all you’ve got? My foreign language skills? If your efforts at persuasion had been as thin as that during our philosophical debates in class, I can assure you, Mr. Logan, I’d have failed you.”