Dead and Gone b-12

by Andrew Vachss

  “All right. Please set sail for the coastline on the California-Oregon border. Once you are in that area, I will provide your captain with precise instructions.”

  “I’m not pulling in to any—”

  “No, sir. We will meet at sea. Fair enough?”

  “I’ll be traveling a long way—”

  “I understand that, sir.”

  “—with a lot of money. I trust I won’t be disappointed.”

  “You will not, I promise you. Until then.”

  “By the time we get there, it will be right around the first of May,” Flacco said. “Even out where he wants to meet, the sea’ll be sweet and calm. Like glass, especially at first light. Anyway, as calm as it ever gets off Oregon; that is one bad coastline, hombre.”

  “That’s more than three weeks,” I said. “It’ll take that long?”

  “I’m giving us a little margin, just in case of weather, but that’s about right. We looked his ship over, and she’s like new. Perfect. We can carry about thirty-five hundred gallons, cruise around twenty-two knots, and we’re working with a range of maybe four thousand miles. So figure Galveston to Progreso to Panama, maybe a week. Then we go through the Canal to Cabo San Lucas.…”

  I gave him a “What?” look.

  “That is the tip of Baja, hombre. Me and Gordito, we know it well, don’t we, compadre?”

  Gordo just smiled.

  “Our next leg is into Dago, then up to San Francisco. Got to allow, oh, two weeks max for that one. Finally, we lay in once we get near the Oregon border. From there, we can hit any spot he picks in two, three hours max.”

  “I thought the Panama Canal was only for commercial ships.”

  “No way. You pay the freight, they let you ride. We lock it from port to port—Cristobal going in, and we exit at Balboa. Whole trip takes maybe nine, ten hours; nothing to it.”

  “How much is the toll?”

  “Depends on the size of the ship. The one we got, under five grand, my best guess.”

  “And you just drive up and pay the toll, like going over a bridge?”

  “No,” Gordo answered. “It is not like that at all, my friend.” He used his fingers to tick off requirements he’d obviously memorized. “We have to radio prior to arrival—ninety-six, seventy-two, forty-eight, and twenty-four hours in front. We make contact on VHF Channel 12, then they find us a working channel to finish up. Then everyone on board needs ID; it’s called a Landing Card. You get those when you hit the first pier. After you pay them.”

  “Damn.”

  “Oh, there’s more,” he went on. “They’ll want a Quarantine Declaration and one for any cargo, too. A crew-and-passenger list. Lots of stuff. And they can inspect you at any time. So we also need an International Tonnage Certificate with all its calculation sheets attached, Lines Plans for the Offset Tables, mucho paper, man. I don’t know if all that’s on board. It should be—that beauty’s an oceangoer, no question. But they’ll do all the measuring and stuff right there if we want. So long as we—”

  “—pay for it,” I finished for him.

  “You got it. And when it comes to paper, Gem …”

  She nodded. “We have all gone through the Canal before,” she said. “It is no problem.”

  It took a half-line in under eight hours.

  “You still want to walk that path with me?” I asked him. “Yes.”

  “Ever been on a boat?”

  “I was a Marine,” he said, as if that answered the question.

  I gave him the meet-point in Galveston. “Bring your tools,” I told him. “There’s something we’re going to need to fix.”

  “Can you make one, Mole?”

  “It would depend on whether the contact point is organic or inorganic.”

  “Huh?”

  “Wood is organic. Metal or plastic is inorganic.”

  “Ah. I don’t know.”

  “I would have to make two, then. The simple one is a penetrator. The other would require either a magnet or suction of some sort. How long would it have to remain in place?”

  “An hour?”

  “Exposed to the elements?”

  “Hell, yes. Probably get blasted with salt water all the time.”

  “The miniaturization is very simple. But given your limited options for a propellant, and the need for accuracy, both devices would have to be the same external configuration.”

  “I guess so.”

  “My man can do it,” Michelle said, confidence radiating off her gorgeous face.

  The Mole blushed. But he didn’t deny it.

  “I’ll need at least three of each of them,” I told him.

  “Okay,” I said to everyone, “here’s how we’ve got to work it.

  Flacco and Gordo will be handling the ship. Levi will ride along with us. With me, Gem, and Max, that’s six.”

  “Plus the two props,” Gem added.

  “I’m not so crazy about that part,” I told her.

  “You said yourself, they would be perfect cover for your persona,” she replied.

  “But I’m only going to need the cover for—”

  “An extra tenth?” she said, lassoing me with my own words about raglan sleeves.

  “Okay. That part’s true. But there’s no guarantee that—”

  “There is a risk. They all know that; the children, too. But for what you are paying, you will be changing their lives—giving them a life, and their families as well.”

  Gem wasn’t wrong about the payments. This whole crazy thing was emptying my stash so deep I’d be into my case money by the time it was over.

  “Right,” I told her, surrendering. “That’s a pretty good load for that boat, I think. Michelle, you stay here and keep the old man calm. Mole, you know what to do if he gets twitchy. Prof, you and Clarence and Randy stay here, too. Everybody hangs until you get the word. Things work out like we plan, Randy motors the old man back to Key West, where he can try out his recovered virility. If it doesn’t, cut your losses.”

  The Prof nodded agreement. The others may not have caught what I meant, but our years together Inside had given us a different level of communication. If they had to get out of there fast, the old man wouldn’t be coming along on the ride.

  “This thing looks like a prop for a sci-fi movie,” Levi said a few days later, the Mole’s creation cradled in his arms. “What’s this little canister thing?” he asked, touching what would be the clip if the thing were a real firearm.

  “A pressure regulator,” the Mole told him. “This is a modified air rifle.”

  “Okay, I get it. Hell, they use these things in the Olympics now. Supposed to be unreal for accuracy.”

  “It should deliver the … projectile between five and seven hundred yards perfectly,” the Mole assured him.

  “That’s no distance,” Levi said. “What am I supposed to hit with it?”

  “We don’t know yet,” I told him.

  Whatever the Mole cooked up for me worked better than I’d even hoped for. The boat made me a little sick—okay, maybe a lot sick—but I got over it pretty quick. There wasn’t any harm in me going on deck—the old man they’d be watching for wouldn’t do that, but I didn’t look anything like him. Still, I stayed below all through the Canal just in case.

  One day Gem came into the stateroom where I spent most of my time. “I am going to give you a manicure,” she announced.

  “What the hell for?”

  “Because a rich old man would not have hands like yours. I cannot do much about the …”

  She let her voice trail away. My hands are like my life: some of the breaks hadn’t healed straight. And the scars spoke for themselves, if you knew how to read them.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I told her. “Once he—”

  “It is part of your role,” she said, solemnly. “Another tenth. Besides, you know how much I love your thumb in my mouth. It would be nicer if it was manicured, perhaps?”

  “Sure,” I said, letting it go.
/>
  “If you wish, I can easily teach one of the children to do it, too. That would be right in character.”

  “No!”

  “Burke, what is so wrong? It would just be part of the—”

  “I said no. That’s the fucking end of it.”

  Gem got to her feet, a thoughtful look on her face. Then she turned away from me, sticking her thumbs in the waistband of her shorts. She pulled them down and bent over in one smooth movement.

  I smacked her bottom half-heartedly. “More,” she said. I did it again, a couple of times, the cracks loud in the closed space.

  She straightened up, adjusted her shorts. Turned around and knelt next to me as she had been before. “I have been punished now, yes?”

  “Sure.”

  “It is not enough?”

  “It’s plenty, Gem. It’s not your fault. There’s some things I just can’t—”

  “It was my fault. I know you. I never should have suggested what I did. I apologize. Do you accept?”

  “Yes, baby girl. Just forget it, okay?”

  “I have been punished, so my debt is paid. I will forget it. But … now may I give you that manicure, please?”

  The next evening, Levi sat down next to me. “It’ll work,” he said, confidently. “I wasn’t sure at first. But I’ve been practicing. Every time there’s no other ship in sight, I toss one of the flotation devices overboard, wait till we’ve got some distance. If I can hit something that small at a hundred yards, what you’re talking about, I can handle it three, four times that distance, no problem.”

  “And you can’t beat it for silence.”

  “That’s for sure. Even over water, you can’t hear a thing.”

  “We’ll probably never get to use it, you understand?”

  “I understand. But if I have to go with the other option, you could double that distance and it’d be no big deal.”

  We made even better time than Flacco had estimated. When he pulled in for the last refueling, I called the Chancellor.

  “Please write this down very carefully,” he said, his voice more cocksure and commanding than it had been when he thought the old man was a long distance away. “Starting from the mouth of the Chetco River, from Red Buoy No. 2, proceed on a course of 238.5 true. This will take you out to 124 degrees, 31 minutes west; 41 degrees, 51 minutes north. Repeat: course is 238.5 true, heading to 124 degrees, 31 minutes west; 41 degrees, 51 minutes north. Please note, that point is slightly more than twelve-point-five nautical miles from the United States coast. If you would please read that back to me …”

  I did that, except for the twelve-mile-limit part.

  “Precisely,” he said. “Please tell your pilot that Red Buoy No. 2 has a flashing red light with a four-second interval. It also has a bell.”

  “I’ve got it.”

  “And the last buoy out, ‘CR,’ which marks the start of the Chetco Channel, is red-and-white-striped. This one flashes white in morse code the letter ‘A.’ And it is equipped with a whistle, not a bell. Are you still with me?”

  “Yes,” I told him. And repeated what I’d written down, word for word, to prove it.

  “Tomorrow morning at oh-seven-hundred.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  “If fog proves a problem, we will radio—”

  “Fine.”

  “Very well, sir. I look forward to meeting you.”

  “What’s he mean, ‘pilot’?” I asked Flacco. “Guys who drive ships’re captains, right?”

  “Right. When you drive, you’re the captain. But the guys who take the boats—the big ones, I mean, like the liners—the guy who brings it in or out of port, they call him the pilot. That was me, through the Canal. Got to have a pilot’s license to work those locks.”

  “And you understand what all this stuff means?” I asked, showing him the directions I’d written down.

  “Sure,” he said. “Just means he wants us to stay with the gyro compass. See where he says true north? That’s different from magnetic north. Could be ten, maybe even twenty-five degrees of difference.”

  “And the true one is the more accurate?”

  “That’s right,” Levi answered. Flacco and Gordo turned to look at him. “That’s working off the GPS, so it’ll be right on the nose, every time. You just dial in latitude and longitude, and it’ll tell you how to steer, stay right on course. But ships have to carry both. Even if we lost electrical power, the magnetic compass would always work.”

  The Mexicans nodded approval. “That’s the truth, man,” Gordo said. “You ever drive?”

  “No,” Levi said. “I was just on board a lot while I was in the Corps. But I’m a good listener.”

  He was a good watcher, too. It was just getting light as Levi stood at the rail, a pair of binoculars to his eyes. “Christ,” he said, softly, “that’s a fucking Zhuk.”

  “A what?” I asked him.

  “A coastal-patrol craft. The Russians started making them thirty years ago. For export only—who’d try and patrol the Russian coast?”

  “Where’d they find buyers? Something like that must cost a few million bucks, right?”

  “Maybe once. Now one, one and a half max. The mobs in charge over there have been selling off the military surplus for a long time now. Hell, you could probably pick one up for half what I said, if you knew where to look. Nicaragua was a big buyer.”

  Russian surplus, I thought to myself. Another piece falling into place. “So it’s nothing like … this one?”

  Levi made a snorting sound. “That one’s packing enough horsepower to fly a good-sized plane. Probably has a crew of fifteen, twenty men. She can make thirty knots and cover over a thousand miles if they go to half-throttle. And that’s if it’s nothing but refurbished stock. If they replaced the original diesels with General Motors or Volvo Penta jobs, it’d be a lot stronger.”

  “So it’s much faster than—”

  “That’s the least of our problems,” he said. “You look close, you can see the fixed machine guns. Those they had to have replaced. We’re probably looking at .50-calibers. Enough to turn this barge into shredded wood.”

  “How could they just run around with stuff like that? They’ve had to dock it somewhere.”

  “Each gun’s on a tripod,” Levi explained. “They could just remove the guns and stow them below when they have to enter a port.”

  “How are they going to get him on board?” I asked, watching the gray metal gunboat slice through the water toward us.

  “When they get close enough, they’ll cut their engines. So will we. After that, we can just orbit—you know, make minor position adjustments—so we’ll be close enough to make the transfer. But I don’t think they’ll come alongside, not with the firepower they’re packing. It’d be like coming down to handgun distance when you’re holding a rifle—makes it harder to use it right.

  “Besides, it’s real calm now and … There! See how their wake is disappearing? Their engines are off now. Go down and tell Flacco to cut ours, too.”

  By the time I’d gotten belowdecks, Flacco had already cut our power. And when I got back up top, Levi handed me the glasses, said: “What did I tell you? Here comes their Zodiac.”

  “That little rubber thing?”

  “It’s not rubber, it’s … never mind. There’s four men on board, three of them openly packing. I’ve got to get into position. And you better get out of sight, quick!”

  When only one man came down the steps, I knew the others were still waiting in that Zodiac. If they’d tried to board, any of them Levi didn’t pick off would have met Max in the shadows where he waited. And our boat would be flying as fast as it could.

  I’d expected a military uniform of some kind, but the man Gem ushered into the stateroom was dressed in a dark-blue suit over a white shirt and wine-red tie. Very presidential.

  Gem ordered the two stick-thin Cambodian girls in matching schoolgirl outfits out of the room in a harsh, commanding tone. Then she escorted him o
ver to where I was sitting in the wheelchair, the oxygen mask in place over my nose and mouth.

  He shook my extended hand, then took a seat in the deep white leather armchair right across from me.

  “May I offer you coffee? Or tea?” Gem asked him, bowing at the waist like a stewardess. Or a geisha.

  “No, thank you,” he answered, politely.

  “Then perhaps—?”

  “Nothing,” he said, dismissing her. He turned his full attention to me: “So, Mr. Preston, we finally meet.”

  “It is my honor, sir.”

  “I am honored that a man of your stature would consider becoming one of us.”

  “If we can come to agreement,” I wheezed through the mask, “it can be done today, as I promised. Surely you have a means of confirming a currency transfer on board your vessel?”

  “Certainly.”

  “I have people standing by,” I told him. “A transfer could be completed in minutes.”

  “Very well. Then let me take this opportunity to answer whatever questions and concerns you have.”

  I pulled the oxygen mask off my face and stared at him, making sure. Dead sure. It was him, no question. The only change was that his remaining hair was cut very short.

  He regarded me calmly, not a flicker of recognition showing in his own eyes. But when I asked, “Why did you try to have me killed?,” my voice penetrated right to his core.

  “You’re—” he gasped.

  “Right. You remember me now, don’t you? I’ve got a new face, but I’m the same man you met with in that fancy townhouse of yours.”

  “Burke,” he said. Just a statement of fact. If he was frightened, it didn’t show.

  “Yeah. And now maybe you’d like to—”

  “I don’t know why you went through this incredibly complicated ruse,” he said, unruffled, the semi-British accent I’d remembered now completely erased from his voice. “But I’m sure you understand that you can’t do anything to me without fatal consequences to yourself. And to everyone on board this vessel. My ship—”