“There was a river pilot on board the container ship,” he explained. “They all live around here. And it was deliberate?”
“We think so.”
“And it was Brother Trask at the helm of the other boat?”
“That’s who set up the rendezvous point, which was the point of all the number strings in the note you brought me. He arrived going at full speed, drove over the top of us, and kept going.”
“So if I happen to see him again, he is, what do the federals call them-a person of interest?”
“If I see him before you do, he’ll be ER-bound.”
“Tsk-tsk, Lieutenant,” he said with a grin. “That would be vigilante talk. We’ll have none of that in our happy little metropolis.”
“I’ll take him out into the county,” I said. “Then I’ll beat the shit out of him. The Bureau’s been cut in on what happened, by the way.”
His expression became serious. “I am hearing some truly strange stories coming out of the Helios power plant,” he said. “You would not be involved in any of those goings-on, would you?”
“Tangentially, but our focus is something else. Our Bureau has invited us to butt out of the other matter, as it were, and we’re obliging.”
“Our Bureau, indeed,” he said. “Oh, there’s something else.”
We took a few steps away from the busy entrance to the deli for some privacy. “There’s an impious young lad in this town who has been, as they say, talking trash in your direction.”
“Ah, that would be Billy,” I replied.
“Yes, it would. Billy Summers. Previously employed by the good colonel at Helios, and now back on the dole and unhappy with that situation.”
“Which he thinks I caused.”
“He does, indeed. Working himself up to doing something about that, apparently.”
“He have the moxie for it?” Tony asked.
McMichaels shrugged. “He’s like a fear-biter dog. You never quite know what Billy Summers will do. It sounds like all talk, but then he can strike out. He is known to us, and we don’t much care for the lad, truth be told.”
“I appreciate the heads-up,” I said. “Unless he’s the kind to take a rifle shot through a lighted window, I think we can handle Billy.”
“He was once accused of taking liberties with an underage child. Never proved, but he’s very, very sensitive about that. If it ever comes to fisticuffs, mention of that will perhaps cloud his judgment.”
It was my turn to grin. This was very useful information if I ever had to duke it out with Billy. If you could get your opponent to lose his temper, the fight became yours to lose. “I’ll remember that,” I said. “Say something like ‘short-eyes.’ ”
“That would probably do it,” he said. “And, Lieutenant: If you’re going to indulge in any more adventures, a word in advance to me would be greatly appreciated.”
“Will do, Sergeant,” I said. “Hopefully we’re done with adventures. At least in Southport. Where in Boston did you come from?”
“Chelsea,” he said. “Got tired of all those taxes.”
We met with the insurance agent and the marina owner. The agent was wriggling hard to get out of paying the bill, but that full-value-replacement-cost clause was fairly self-explanatory. They wanted to see the results of the police investigation before writing a check, and there was nothing we could do about that. I asked if we could get another boat. The marina owner said sure; the insurance agent said absolutely not. For the moment, we were in a boat-free zone.
But not idle. I had the beginnings of an idea about where Trask might be hiding out, assuming he was still in the area. The problem was, Trask’s whereabouts did not relate, as best I knew, to what had happened to Allie. The man had tried to kill us, so we had a score to settle, but surely the Bureau was searching hard for Carl Trask, and didn’t need us interfering with that, either. Tony suggested I call Creeps and tell him my idea, but I decided to just lie low for the moment. We went back into town to get new cell phones, and then to the beach house to check messages and look at those Helios visitor logs again.
In the event, Tony had to go back to Triboro to close up two cases that were overdue. Pardee was helping Ari over at the plant, which meant I’d have at least one guy in the area as backup. I told Tony to call me once he got his stuff squared away; I wanted him to run down a couple of things in Triboro relating to Allie’s background. Then I took the mutts out on the beach for a leisurely run. When I got back, I checked the portable computer for messages, but there were none. We hadn’t activated the house phone, so I was a bit surprised when it rang as I was getting out of the shower. No one I knew had this number; for that matter, I didn’t even know what the house number was.
I picked up, trying not to drip too much on the carpet. A familiar voice was on the line.
“Sorry we missed you the other night, Lieutenant,” Trask said. “In a manner of speaking, of course.”
“Actually, you didn’t miss at all,” I said. “You just failed to follow through.”
“Yeah, well, I was never all that good at completed staff work,” he said.
“I thought we were going to talk.”
“Well.”
“Who’s that in the moonpool, wearing your boots? Inquiring minds want desperately to know.”
“Nobody important,” he said. “I suppose you want to know why you went swimming in the ocean.”
“I figured we were starting to get in the way of something imminent,” I said. “Feel free to elaborate, of course.”
“You’re close. Tell you what: If you promise to back out, I’ll promise to leave you alone. How’s that sound?”
“Sounds like: Dream on, Trask. I think I know where you’re holed up, and I’m never going to leave you alone.”
He laughed. “You knock yourself out, then, Lieutenant, but you better bring some competent help.”
“Count on it,” I said, and then I had an idea. “Did you say ‘sorry we missed you’?”
There was just the slightest hesitation in his reply. “I might have,” he said.
“So who’s we? Not perchance that moonpool engineer, Petrowska’s number two? Dr. Thomason?”
“Hoo-aah,” he said.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” I said. “Now: Why shouldn’t I call Creeps Caswell and fill him in on this conversation? You’re out there somewhere in the weeds like the snake you are, but Thomason, he’s right there at Helios. And I’ll bet he’ll stand up under competent questioning for, what, a good fifteen seconds?”
“You would be wrong about that, because, one, he’s a lot tougher than he looks, and two, you still want to know what happened to your ace employee, Ms. Allison Gardner, don’t you? I can answer that for you, but not if you go running to tell teacher. Let’s talk. How’s tonight work for you?”
“Tonight’s just dandy,” I said. “But I’m not coming to talk.”
“Oh, hell, Lieutenant, we can talk and then we can rumble. I might even tell you what the fuck we’re up to, and why. You seem like the kind of guy who might appreciate it, even. Either way, whoever comes out on top can talk all he wants to, or not, as the case might be, right?”
“I believe I know what you’re up to, although I think that’s no longer possible, what with all the attention you’ve brought to Helios. So: How’s about the container junkyard, sometime after sundown?”
“Hah!” he said. “That was a pretty good guess.”
“The word among the ICE people is that you have a spider-hole over there,” I said. I wanted him to know we’d been there and that we were known to the operatives at the container port. He ignored me.
“And you’ll bring the shepherds?” he asked.
“You betchum, Red Rider.”
“Won’t that be interesting,” he said.
We exchanged cell numbers, and then I hung up. I went to find Creeps’s number. I knew Trask had been talking about one of those High Noon moments, just the two of us mano a mano, alone in the m
iddle of the street, itchy fingers dangling over holstered Colts. Conceptually, I was fine with that notion. Practically speaking, I wanted three Bucars’ worth of heavily armed special agents lurking in the shadows on my side, plus a wire, plus a silenced helicopter with an operable death ray overhead. I sincerely doubted that Trask knew the first thing about Allie Gardner’s death. What he really wanted was me in the open long enough for a clean. 30-06 head shot, followed by a quiet splash in the Cape Fear River at max tidal current. The quip about the dogs was just more BS.
Special Agent Caswell was not available, and would I like to leave a message? I asked them to have him call me before 6:00 P.M. Subject? Apprehension of Carl Trask. Spell Trask. I did. We’ll be sure to pass that on.
Then I called Pardee, who said he was up to his eyeballs in the inner workings and hidden mechanisms of the station’s security access system.
“Getting anywhere?” I asked.
“Anywhere I want to,” he said. “That’s the problem.”
“How so?”
“Somebody’s rigged the system to grant universal and unreported access to the right card. We’re assuming it was Trask’s card, which, of course, is missing.”
“Didn’t Ari suspend his access?”
“He thinks he has,” Pardee said. “I’m not so sure. I think Trask has some pretty competent help.”
I briefed him on my phone call from said Colonel Trask.
“Wow,” he said. “You tell the Bureau?”
“I did leave a message with Creeps’s office. As for Ari, you can tell him we think Trask is not only alive and well, but that he’s aiming some kind of shit at Helios. I’ll need you for this little op this evening.”
“Got it; the head NRC data-dink is a little miffed that I found some things they couldn’t.”
“Try something for me while you’re still in place: Get Dr. Thomason’s access card, see if it has magic it’s not supposed to.”
“Who’s he?”
“That Russian’s deputy dog, in the moonpool building.”
“Will do. See you shortly.”
At ten that evening, Pardee, the shepherds, and I climbed through the tattered chain-link fence on the landward side of the container junkyard. No longer having a boat, we’d driven across into Wilmington and parked in an industrial area behind an abandoned elementary school. I’d sandwiched the Suburban between two semitrailers that looked as if they’d grown roots into the trash-littered concrete.
We’d ended up with two choices on the timing of our get-together with Trask. We could go early, find a decent tactical position out there in the junkyard, and wait for Trask, or we could go much later, making Trask do the waiting, while ceding to him a good ambush position. Pardee had suggested a third option: Don’t go at all. Ask the Bureau to scour the junkyard at the appointed time and see what they came up with.
The problem was that my Bureau had never called back. Creeps either didn’t get the message, or did and failed to care. Or he’d been told to stay out of it by his adult supervision. Unknowns abounded. I’d been about to chide Pardee for his lack of interest in a good fight, but then remembered the tension we’d experienced the last time he and Tony backed out.
We’d also talked about calling the port security people, but, as Pardee pointed out, we had no standing with them, and their domain probably did not extend to the junkyard. If we ran into the undercover ICE agent, he’d know who we were, but otherwise we were as unauthorized as Trask. My objective was to lay eyes and possibly a tire iron on Carl Trask, and find out if his little comment about Allie Gardner was real or just an enticement. We had new cell phones with all the appropriate numbers programmed into speed dial, guns, dogs, and a personal invitation. All we had to do now was find him, and hopefully not from the focal point of his kill zone.
We had a map, of sorts. Pardee had gone online to one of those satellite photography Web sites and bought a direct overhead picture of the entire container port area, zoomed close enough to make out individual features of the container junkyard. He’d printed out two copies, and we’d traced a route that should take us through the campfire area. From there we’d do an expanding square search. The plan was for the shepherds and me to go in and for Pardee to follow about five minutes behind in case I stepped in something.
If we didn’t encounter Trask, we’d join forces at the gap in the fence, look for a place to hole up out there, and then I’d see if I could flush him out. It wasn’t a very complicated plan, but then it wasn’t a very complicated mission. In my experience you could plan all day, but, as the military guys say, no plan survives first contact with the enemy, so you might as well keep it simple.
We set our cell phones on vibrate, and I went through the fence and down a steep embankment into the jumble of wrecked containers. The night was clear and not all that cold for a change. There was plenty of light looming into the sky from the main container yard, but the junkyard was not lighted at all. I had to pick my way carefully through the shadowy pile while not showing any light of my own. After a few clumsy minutes of this, I found a piece of steel pipe I could use as a walking stick, which made things easier. I was wearing SWAT cammies and a tactical belt with holster, one spare clip, a small first aid pouch, and a military survival knife.
Our overhead photography showed that the area where we’d run into the derelicts was about two hundred yards in from the warehouse side of the junkyard. Beyond that was the creek inlet where we’d anchored when we still had a boat. I’d explained the mission to the shepherds, who’d been vitally interested for a good five seconds. Still, now they seemed to understand that we were walking into Injun country. Frick walked ahead of me, picking her footing carefully and stopping to sniff the ground frequently. I could only imagine how strong the scent quilt must be to that supersensitive nose. Frack walked behind me, stepping where I did, as if he suspected there were land mines in here.
I slowed it down, placing each step tentatively on the litter underfoot before putting my weight on it. Trask knew we couldn’t come by water this time, so our way in would have to be through the container yard itself or the warehouse blocks on the landward side. That three-container tunnel was just too good a place for an ambush, which was why we’d come in from the Wilmington side. I leaned against the rusting sides of a fractured container and tried to think of what I would do if I were Trask. Would he simply want to finish the job, or did he really want to talk a little? Was he expecting just me or all three of us? Or was he out on his boat somewhere, having a Scotch and laughing at the thought of us poking around in the junkyard? If he was in here somewhere, had he ever wired his private concrete jungle for sound and night vision lights? The farther in I went, the better Pardee’s option three sounded.
I had stopped in a sort of canyon of discarded shipping containers. I’d been keeping to the left side of the passage through all the containers because it seemed darker on that side, as well as less cluttered with debris. There was a strong smell of diesel oil in the air now, but I couldn’t tell if I was standing in a puddle of it or it was just the rusting steel barrels oozing into the night air. It was nearly complete darkness where I was standing, but I could see a dim light flickering around the edges of the ten-foot-high steel boxes ahead.
Flickering?
Had I reached the hobo campfire already? It seemed too soon, but it was easy to become disoriented here in the darkness amid the jumble of industrial trash, wrecked containers, and other debris. The dogs had their ears up and appeared to be listening to something ahead of us. I tried to listen, too, but heard nothing but the low hum of the city behind me and the whine of semi tires out on Shipyard Boulevard. If that was the campfire area, the way to it was straight ahead on what was obviously a well-used path.
Too well used. It felt wrong.
So I retraced my steps until I came to the edge of a container, which I could feel more than see, and turned right to work my way around to a different approach. I’d be off the route Pardee and I had agr
eed upon, but I should have time to get to the margins of the campfire area before he came along behind me. Ten quietly crunching steps into almost total darkness and I bumped into the steel walls of another container that was blocking the way.
I was in a box canyon, literally. There were steel walls rising ten feet over my head in three directions.
There was a crack between the corners of the two boxes, through which I could now definitely make out the glow of a small fire reflecting off a two-high stack of ruined containers. I could see a few hunched shapes of the homeless guys silhouetted against the fire. I looked over my shoulder and saw that the shepherds were waiting for me back where I’d made the wrong turn. Lot of help there, I thought.
Then they both looked over their shoulders and disappeared.
I blinked and looked again. No dogs.
Keeping my back to one of the containers, I slid my way back to the entrance of my little detour, all by feel. I still had the steel pipe, but I laid this down in order to extract my. 45 and a high-intensity penlight from my coat pocket.
When I got back to the entrance to my dead end, there were still no shepherds. What in the hell had they gone after? Hopefully not a rat. The wolf genes in any German shepherd might not be able to resist a fleeing rat. Discipline would eventually intrude, but the reflexive reaction would be a snapping lunge. I should have put them on a down, but that would have involved speaking the command in the darkness.
I waited by the edge of the container. I could feel sharp edges of ripped metal digging into my coat. How long had I been stopped? Would Pardee come around the corner in a minute? I tried to visualize our planned route in. I’d diverted into the dead end, but now I was back at the edge of the way we’d planned. Maybe the thing to do was to wait for Pardee before approaching those huddled figures out by the fire.
Except my scouts had gone missing. I felt like Lee at Gettysburg.
I waited and listened some more. The air had gotten colder the deeper I’d gone into the tangle. I was hoping for any sound I could recognize that might tell me where they’d run off to. It wasn’t like them to leave me in the dark like this.
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