Dead on Arrival

by Mike Lawson

  Unfortunately, he wasn’t going to be able to stay for the fireworks; he would be miles away before the show started.

  He checked his watch, and even without the binocu lars he could see the water taxi loading on the Norfolk side of the river. Several men in white uniforms, maybe five or six, were walking onto the ferry together. He knew there was a large navy base in the area and he was guessing that the men in uniform were naval officers, and considering who they were with, they were probably admirals. He placed the binoculars to his eyes. Yes, there he was, surrounded by admirals. The goatee, he thought, made the black man look more like a saxophone player than a politician.

  The Ukrainian waited until the boat was halfway across the river before he picked up the rifle.

  Mahoney later said to DeMarco, ‘The moral of the story, son, is never fuck over a man who plans assassinations for a living.’

  76

  DeMarco put his feet up on the rail of the deck and looked out at the lake. It was still light out at eight-thirty in the evening, and hot too, but a nice breeze coming off the water made the heat bearable. The surface was getting a little choppy now, but earlier in the day the lake had been as flat as a pane of glass.

  He was a little tired from having spent most of the day outdoors, in the sun, waterskiing a good part of the time, and it felt good just sitting there. No, it felt great just sitting there, particularly considering that only yesterday he’d been in his basement office in D.C.

  Yesterday he’d received two phone calls, and it was in part due to the first call that he accepted the invitation he received in the second call. The first call had been from his ex-wife, wishing him a happy birthday, a week after the event, and thanking him, for a second time, for what he had done for his cousin Danny. That wouldn’t have been so bad except the call ended with: You know I still love you. He didn’t slam the phone down when he heard that, he just placed it gently in the cradle and sat there a minute with his eyes closed, wishing the woman would move to a different planet.

  When the phone rang the second time he almost didn’t answer it, thinking it might be Marie calling back because he’d cut her off. But it wasn’t Marie, it was Ellie. The first words she said were: Have I got a deal for you.

  The boy would enter the refinery that night at 1 A.M. All the devices, except for one, were ready.

  He would drop him off and wait for him to install the bombs, and as soon as he was back outside the refinery fence, the boy would call on his cell phone. Then he would wish God’s blessings on the boy and leave. He wanted to be far away when people started dying.

  He called the boy over and had him try on the vest, a vest sports fishermen used that had many pockets. The C-4 was in a pocket over his heart. He had never told him how hydrofluoric acid killed; he’d implied, without lying, that people breathed the gas and simply died. But this was better. When the materials had arrived and he saw there was enough material for one extra device, he decided the boy would wear it. The Americans would still be able to identify him because of the letters and DNA, but this way he would die a painless death and kill whoever was standing near him.

  ‘Is your spirit ready for the journey?’ he asked.

  ‘It is,’ the boy said.

  Oh, this child! He kissed him on the forehead and said, ‘Let’s pray together until it’s time to leave.’

  Eddie Kolowski was late and he was drunk. Son of a bitch. He’d gone to a wake for a guy he’d been in the navy with, and shit, next thing he knew, it was midnight and he was three sheets to the wind. He knew he oughta slow down, some cop was gonna pull him over for sure, but even at the speed he was going, he wasn’t gonna get to the refinery until one, maybe one-thirty. If it had been just him and Billy on the shift, bein’ late wouldn’t be a big deal, but with that little Mormon shit still there – why in hell hadn’t that kid quit yet? – he might get reported. Son of a bitch.

  Have I got a deal for you.

  Ellie said her rich aunt was going on vacation for a couple of weeks and she wanted somebody to house-sit her fancy place on Lake Erie. And as she was through with the summer class she’d been teaching, and as she’d have access to a water-ski boat and her aunt’s Mercedes, and as the house was stocked with steaks and booze, she decided to accommodate her beloved aunt – and she just wondered if DeMarco could get away for a few days to join her.

  DeMarco had immediately called the speaker’s office and confirmed that Mahoney was still in Boston and had no plans to come back to D.C. anytime soon. He was on a plane that afternoon and waterskiing the next day.

  Ellie was in the bathroom getting ready to go out. She wanted to have a few drinks at this place downtown and dance. DeMarco didn’t really like to dance all that much, but for her he’d pretend that he did. He’d stand there like a tree, firmly rooted to the earth, move his arms a little, and she’d dance around him like he was some sort of thick Italian maypole.

  He looked down at the paper lying on the deck at his feet. Mahoney had been right about Fine – and about Lincoln.

  Oliver Lincoln admitted immediately that he was responsible for Nick Fine’s death. A number of African Americans had taken to the streets as a result of the senator’s assassination and they were demanding that the government find the white racist who had killed him. Lincoln said he didn’t want anyone to get hurt because of Fine, but his main reason for confessing to Fine’s murder was that he didn’t want the bastard turned into a hero and a martyr. He said again it was Nick Fine who had paid him to orchestrate the terrorist attacks, not that simpleton Broderick.

  When asked how he had arranged to have Fine killed, Lincoln said it was pretty simple. He knew several assassins; that was the business he’d been in. He gave an old friend a letter to mail to one of them, and had his friend transfer money from one of his hidden bank accounts to the assassin. The FBI had not found all his offshore accounts and since he was never going to get out of prison, what better use did he have for the money? After the hit, he instructed his pal to pay the assassin the other half of his considerable fee, including a rather generous tip for both the assassin and his friend.

  When asked if he had paid someone to kill Bianca Castro, Lincoln said no. He just had his friend mail a letter to a relative of Jorge Rivera.

  But DeMarco didn’t care about Fine or Lincoln or Pugh or any of them now. He was going dancing with a schoolteacher.

  He stopped the car, the truck, whatever it was, a safe distance from the refinery.

  It was out of his hands from this point forward. Even though he did not need to say it again, he told the boy, ‘Don’t enter the plant until the young guard returns to the building by the gate.’

  ‘I know,’ the boy said.

  ‘And put the first device on the tank. You must plant that one. If you’re caught while you’re inside the facility, detonate the bombs. Not as many will die, but on a night like this a lot of people will still be on the streets, drinking in bars, sleeping with their windows open.’

  ‘I know,’ the boy said again. He seemed impatient to be on his way.

  He was thinking that if the boy had to detonate the bombs prematurely he would shut the car windows and drive as fast as he could, but he might die too. So be it.

  There was only one thing left to say.

  ‘Go with God.’

  The boy nodded his head, his eyes luminous. He opened the door and exited the vehicle. In one hand he held the short-handled shovel that he would need to dig under the refinery fence. In his other hand was the satchel that contained the bombs.

  Eddie had made good time – it was only twelve-thirty – but by the time he punched in and changed and got to the guard shack, he was going to be almost two hours late for work.

  Oh, shit! Was that a car stopped on the road up there? Was that a fuckin’ cop? He tapped the brakes and slowed down. He still couldn’t make out if it was a cop car or not, and that’s when he realized that he’d been driving with his lights off ever since he’d left the bar. Half the
time, that’s the way cops caught drunks: the drunk would forget to turn on his lights. Eddie reached down and turned on his lights when he was fifty yards from the car parked on the side of the road. Thank God, it wasn’t a cop. There was no light bar on the car. Then, as he blasted past the car, he caught a young guy in his headlights holding a backpack and something else.

  It took him a couple of seconds to realize what he’d seen: it was that guy with the puke-green El Camino. He hadn’t seen the car in maybe six months. The last time was before the strike. Yeah, he’d seen it maybe three times before the strike, always at night near the plant. He’d noticed the car because his worthless brother-in-law had owned an El Camino. Only an idiot, which his brother-in-law was, would buy one. Eddie always figured: You wanna car, buy a car; you wanna truck, buy a truck; but for God’s sake don’t get something that thinks it’s both.

  There was something else bothering him about what he’d just seen, but he didn’t know what it was.

  He finally got to the gate and Billy let him into the refinery and gave him this where-the-fuck-you-been look as he drove through the gate.

  The bar had an outside deck and a disc jockey that played rock-and-roll oldies, the kind of music DeMarco liked. Fortunately, for the moment, the guy had picked something slow, an old Roy Orbison song. He held Ellie close and she felt good. He wished the guy would just play slow dances the rest of the night. He didn’t look like such a doofus dancing slow and he got to hold a beautiful woman in his arms while he danced.

  He was sweating a little – Ellie was sweating more because she moved more than just her shoulders when she danced – and the breeze coming off the lake felt great. There was a funny smell that came with the breeze though. Maybe it was coming from that big ugly facility he’d seen on the way to the bar. Whatever, the breeze felt good, funny smell or not.

  He looked over the top of Ellie’s head and saw another woman dancing that reminded him of Emma – tall, short blondish hair – and he wondered how Emma was doing with Edith Baxter. Emma had told him she was going to save Edith. She had a brilliant psychologist friend in New York, a woman she’d once lived with, and Emma and the doctor were going to see Edith whether Edith liked it or not. Emma figured Edith was such a formidable personality that her friends – she had no relatives left – were afraid to force her to get help. Well, Emma was pretty formi dable too, and she was determined to make Edith get some help before she killed herself.

  And while Emma was off doing good works, DeMarco was dancing with a pretty woman, and he’d spend tomorrow zooming around Lake Erie in a fast boat. He really got a kick out of driving that ski boat.

  ‘You wanna head on home?’ Ellie whispered into his ear. She sounded both tired and sexy at the same time.

  ‘You bet,’ DeMarco said.

  ‘You’re late,’ the little Mormon shit said to him, as soon as he stepped into the guard shack. ‘And you’re drunk.’

  Eddie was still trying to get his belt buckled, the belt that held the gun he’d never fired and the can of Mace he’d never used. Finally, he got the damn thing through the hole in the belt; if he didn’t lose some weight he was gonna have to get a bigger belt.

  ‘Shut up,’ he said to the Mormon kid. Before the kid could say something else, he said to Billy, ‘I saw something funny tonight, on the way here.’

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ Billy said.

  ‘Yeah, this El Camino.’

  ‘El Camino. You mean one of them cars that’s—’

  ‘Yeah, one of them weird Chevys. My dickwad brother-in-law, he owned one. Anyway I seen this—’

  ‘Billy, it’s your turn to patrol,’ the Mormon kid said.

  ‘Shut the fuck up!’ Eddie said. ‘I’m talkin’ here and it might be important. Anyway,’ he said to Billy, ‘I seen this same car parked around here, two–three times before the strike.’

  ‘On our shift?’ Billy said.

  ‘Yeah, but there’s something else. I saw this kid gettin’ outta the car, and there’s something about this kid, this little scrawny hook-nosed kid, but I just can’t put my finger on it.’

  ‘Have you seen the kid around here before?’ Billy said.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Eddie said. ‘There’s something about him, but I can’t remember what. And when I saw him tonight, I think he was holding something in his hand, but—’

  The Mormon kid said, ‘You say you’ve seen this car, this …’

  ‘El Camino,’ Eddie said.

  ‘You’ve seen it near the plant a few times on our shift?’ the Mormon kid said.

  ‘Yeah, that’s what I just said. Clean out your ears!’

  ‘We should call this in,’ the Mormon kid said.

  ‘No way!’ Billy said.

  ‘I dunno,’ Eddie said, talking more to himself than the other two guards. ‘There’s just something about this kid.’

  ‘We should hit the button,’ the Mormon kid said, and Eddie looked over at him. The kid’s eyes were all bright, all lit up, like he’d just seen Jesus.

  ‘Are you outta your goddamned mind?’ Billy said.

  There really wasn’t a button, it was just an expression. Hitting the button meant they’d make three phone calls. The first one would be to the foreman of the guys working in the plant, telling him there was a potential security problem and to get his guys assembled in case they had to evacuate the plant. The second call was to one of the big bosses. But the third call went to the sheriffs. The company had a deal with the sheriffs that if they had a potential security problem on the backshift, the sheriffs would send some patrol cars, lights flashing, sirens blaring, and they’d start searching the plant with the guards. The last thing Eddie wanted was to be talkin’ to some boss – or some deputy – smelling like a damn brewery, then telling them that the reason he’d hit the button was that he’d seen something funny, but he didn’t know what.

  Goddammit, what was it about that scrawny kid he’d seen next to the El Camino?

  ‘If you even think we have a potential security threat,’ the Mormon kid said, ‘the manual says you’re supposed to hit the button.’

  ‘Aw, shut the fuck up,’ Eddie and Billy said at the same time.

  Maybe he’d just patrol with Billy but really patrol. Just walk around a little and check things out. Plus the walk was a good idea, it’d sober him up some.

  ‘I’m making the call,’ the Mormon kid said.

  ‘You touch that phone, and I swear to God I’ll break your arm,’ Eddie said.

  77

  DeMarco got out of bed, trying not to wake Ellie, who was a shapely mound under the sheets, one tanned leg sticking out. DeMarco smiled. He was a lucky man.

  He went to the bathroom, took a quick shower, and put on shorts, a faded Redskins T-shirt, and flip-flops, and then made a pot of coffee. He looked out at the lake through the kitchen window and then up at the sky. Perfect. The lake was flat and the sky was cloudless. It was going to be another good day to go jettin’ around in Ellie’s aunt’s boat.

  He went outside and got the paper, then took the paper and his coffee out onto the deck. He wished he had a big house with a deck on a lake. He slipped the rubber band off the paper and saw the headline: TERRORIST ATTACK FOILED AT LAKE ERIE REFINERY.

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ he said out loud, then read the article.

  Last night, security guards at the Sheffield refinery on Lake Erie foiled a terrorist attack that could have resulted in hundreds and possibly thousands of deaths. According to FBI spokesperson Jerome Hickson, the terrorist was a fourteen-year-old American Muslim from Cleveland named Javed Khan, who is now in police custody.

  At approximately 1 A.M., Khan dug a shallow hole under the refinery’s security fence, entered the refinery, and attached three explosive devices to tanks and pipes containing hydrofluoric acid. According to Dr Matthew Trace, a professor of chemistry at Ohio State University, inhaling even small amounts of hydrofluoric acid can be fatal or cause permanent damage to organs.

  Khan also had a fourth
bomb attached to his clothing. The FBI believes that Khan had intended to wait until refinery workers were entering the facility on Tuesday morning, and then he would have gotten as close to the refinery’s main gate as possible and exploded all four bombs simultaneously, including the one on his person. By doing this he not only would have released the hydrofluoric acid to the atmosphere but would also have killed or injured numerous refinery workers and made it more difficult for the refinery to deal with the catastrophe. It is unclear how many people would have died if the bombs had been deton ated, but experts said that if the acid had been released, it could have affected people as far as ten miles away from the refinery.

  Two security guards, Edward Kolowski and William Horton, were making a routine patrol of the refinery’s perimeter when they saw Khan crawling under the secur ity fence. He had already planted his explosives and was attempting to leave the facility. When Khan was captured, the remote control for detonating the bombs was in his jacket pocket, but because Kolowski and Horton seized the terrorist as he was crawling under the fence, Khan was unable to reach the remote. Had he been able to reach it, the FBI believes that he would have exploded the bombs at that time, killing the guards and himself and releasing the acid to the atmosphere. The FBI spokesperson stated that Khan had an accomplice, a man driving a pale green Chevrolet El Camino; all law enforcement agencies in the area are looking for the vehicle.

  Mr Hickson noted that the possibility of terrorists attacking refineries has been a concern for some time and that Congress has held hearings on the subject. John Tolliver, plant operations manager for the refinery, stated that such concerns have been overstated and last night’s events showed that refinery security procedures were effective. Tolliver said, ‘We have state-of-the-art security equipment at our refineries, but our primary line of defense is highly trained, alert security personnel like Ed Kolowski and Bill Horton.’