The second perimeter

by Mike Lawson

  Emma assumed that Li Mei was telling the truth: that she’d contacted the Chinese at some point in the last two hours and made a deal with them to take her if Li Mei could arrange delivery. But Emma also imagined the Chinese wanted Li Mei more than they wanted her.

  “If you try to hand me over to your people they’ll kill you, Li Mei.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe I’ll make the exchange and survive. What I won’t let them do is capture me. And if I die, I’ll go to my death with the satisfaction of knowing that you’ll suffer for months, maybe for years. That’s enough for me.”

  Keep her talking.

  “My God, Li Mei, you’re still a young woman. Is that all you want from life, for me to suffer?”

  “Yes,” Li Mei said.

  That was all, just “yes.” Nothing mattered to her anymore but destroying Emma.

  “One more thing,” Li Mei said. “Your friend dies, too.”

  Li Mei suddenly called out in Chinese. She screamed, “Kill the white man.” Emma’s Chinese was too rusty to understand her but it didn’t matter, she knew what Li Mei meant.

  “No!” Emma screamed.

  A moment later there was a burst of gunfire. It took Emma a few seconds to realize the shots had not come from behind her, the direction that DeMarco had taken, but from one of the piers.

  * * *

  DEMARCO HAD WALKED through the parking lot and started up the access road, toward the parkway. He turned his head once to look back at Emma and saw her standing near her car. He couldn’t see Li Mei.

  He looked around, into the darkness. Where the hell was the Chinese guy? He knew one of the men was on the pier near Li Mei and one was near the concession stand, but one had to be close to him, hidden somewhere on the grassy strip. And that big bastard Carmody, where was he?

  He didn’t think the Chinese gangster would shoot him; that would make too much noise. But any minute now, as soon as he was completely out of Emma’s sight, and before he could reach the parkway, the guy was probably going to come out of the bushes and put a knife into his gut. He knew it. He had to get his hands free. Fast.

  He looked behind him again. He could barely see Emma. Twenty yards away, there was a bend in the access road and there were trees near the bend. He walked toward the bend as fast as he could. He didn’t think Li Mei would be able to see him there— the trees should block her view— but the Chinese guy on the grassy strip probably could see him. As soon as reached the bend he went for the nearest tree and started to scrape the tape binding his hands against the bark of the tree. He rubbed frantically, peeling off more skin than tape, and it hurt like hell— but finally the tape came free.

  Now what? Run up to the parkway and try to flag down a car, or stay with Emma? The smart thing to do would be to run to the parkway before one of the Chinese guys could get to him. So he ran toward the parkway— but he wasn’t going to abandon Emma.

  DeMarco’s idea was to run toward the parkway but before he reached it, he would double back. If the Chinese guy on the grassy strip was watching him, he’d think DeMarco was fleeing. So if he went toward the parkway and then looped back, he might be able to get behind the guy. Probably not a very good plan— probably a really dumb plan— but he didn’t have a better one. He needed to find a big stick or rock, he thought, and then he started running.

  DeMarco couldn’t see well in the dark and he couldn’t find Li Mei’s man. He was moving slowly now, cautiously. Three or four minutes passed, maybe more, and he was almost back to the parking lot and he still hadn’t seen the bastard. With his luck the guy was some kind of ninja who could make himself invisible. He continued to move forward, probing the darkness with his eyes. He hefted a big rock he’d picked up, ready to throw it if he saw the guy. And then he saw him.

  He was lying on the ground near the public restroom, but he didn’t seem to be hiding because he was lying on his back. DeMarco moved quickly forward, intending to launch himself at the man if he moved, but he didn’t. He reached the man and touched him. He didn’t move. He wasn’t cold yet, but DeMarco thought he was dead. He didn’t bother to check for a pulse; there wasn’t time. Instead he searched the ground around the body with his hands. He found the man’s gun, the Uzi or whatever the hell it was.

  Now he was ready. He was pissed off and he was armed. Armed with a gun he didn’t know how to shoot, but armed nonetheless. He started moving forward toward Li Mei’s position. As he walked he tried to figure out where the safety on the gun was. He found a little switch near the trigger guard, but he didn’t know which way to flip it and it was too dark to see any markings on the gun. Would the guy have had the safety on or off? DeMarco wondered. DeMarco bet the safety was off. If it had been him, the safety would have been off at this point.

  And then he heard the sound of another Uzi firing.

  Who the hell had they killed: Emma or Carmody?

  * * *

  CARMODY LET THE current pull him along until he was next to the pier. As he floated he searched the pier through the night-vision goggles. A movement caught his eye and he finally saw the man on the pier. He was hiding behind the bow of a boat that jutted out over the pier. The man was in a position where he could observe Li Mei and Emma, and was maybe fifty yards from Li Mei’s car.

  Carmody noticed that this man was bigger than the two men he’d already neutralized, almost as big as him. He pulled off the night-vision goggles and let them sink into the river. He dove and swam past the man on the pier, past three moored boats, and pulled himself up onto the wooden planks of the pier. He was behind the man now.

  He looked over toward the parking lot. Emma was out of her car and standing about twenty paces away from Li Mei. Li Mei was holding a pistol. He could hear the women talking but couldn’t understand what they were saying.

  Just keep her talking a minute longer, Carmody thought.

  He crept up behind the man hiding on the pier, extended his right arm, and shot him in the back. Carmody’s gun made no noise; just a puff of air, like a BB gun firing. That should have been it, game over, but the man had been holding his weapon with his finger on the trigger. When Carmody shot him, the Chinese gangster pulled reflexively on the trigger of his weapon and the Uzi gave off a noisy ten-round burst. Bullets skipped across the Boundary Channel, some hitting the wooden hull of a boat on the next pier.

  Goddamnit, Carmody thought, and he immediately stood up and said in Chinese, “Everything’s okay. I made a mistake.” Then he started walking down the pier toward Li Mei and Emma. He hunched over a bit to minimize his height. It was dark on the pier and he figured that if he walked calmly, Li Mei might think, at least momentarily, that it was her man approaching. He only had to fool her for a few more seconds, just another thirty yards, until he was close enough to fire the pistol and be sure of hitting her.

  * * *

  LI MEI TURNED toward the sound of gunfire and heard Ming say everything was all right. But was that Ming? No! The man was too big. Li Mei had excellent night vision. She could see the man now. It was Carmody!

  She didn’t know how he had gotten here— she thought she’d killed him in Vancouver, but she obviously hadn’t. He wasn’t dead; he was coming toward her. He was Emma’s ace in the hole.

  Li Mei immediately raised her pistol and fired— and she saw Carmody stagger.

  Before Li Mei could fire a second shot at Carmody, Emma leaped forward, throwing herself at Li Mei. She drove the Chinese woman to the ground and was able to grasp Li Mei’s right hand, the hand holding the pistol.

  Emma struggled to get the gun away from Li Mei, but she was losing. Li Mei was stronger and younger— and insane. She was going to break Emma’s grip any second.

  Carmody picked himself up off the pier. Li Mei’s weapon had struck his body armor— right where his heart was. He saw Emma and Li Mei wrestling and he smiled. He ran toward the women, his gun hand extended, and stopped about ten yards from them, close enough so he wouldn’t miss. It didn’t really matter to him which one he shot
first. He started to pull the trigger.

  At that moment, DeMarco burst from the darkness, wild-eyed, the Uzi in his hands. DeMarco was scared. He thought there were still two Chinese guys out there somewhere armed as he was, but instead he saw Carmody. Carmody was holding a pistol and it was aimed at Emma and Li Mei, and the two women were on the ground, fighting. Carmody was the immediate threat.

  “Carmody!” he yelled. “Drop the gun.”

  Carmody spun in DeMarco’s direction, the pistol in his hand now pointing toward DeMarco.

  DeMarco didn’t hesitate. He pulled the trigger on the weapon. He figured the gun shot so many bullets that some of them had to hit Carmody no matter how bad his aim. But when he squeezed the trigger nothing happened. The goddamn safety was on; he’d guessed wrong.

  Carmody fired back immediately and hit DeMarco. DeMarco looked down at his chest in amazement and said, “Aw, shit.” The Uzi dropped from his hand and he collapsed, his legs folding under him. He could see the Uzi, only a foot away, and he reached out for it but his arm was leaden, a useless deadweight attached to his shoulder.

  Just before he disappeared into the void, DeMarco saw Carmody fire two more times.

  First he shot Li Mei in the throat.

  Then he shot Emma in the heart.

  74

  Mahoney shoveled a forkful of scrambled eggs into his mouth. He felt like a million bucks. Hell, a zillion bucks. He was practically grinning, even with his mouth full.

  He looked across the table at Emma and DeMarco. Sourpusses, the both of them, sitting there glumly, barely touching their breakfasts. In Emma’s case, breakfast was half a grapefruit and unbuttered toast. Life was just too short to eat that way, Mahoney thought.

  “Yeah, you guys got your asses kicked on this one,” Mahoney said. “But cheer up. You busted up a spy ring and took one very nasty bitch off the board.”

  Neither Emma nor DeMarco responded, but Emma looked at Mahoney like she might take her little pointed grapefruit spoon and shove it into his thick neck.

  Carmody had beaten them all. He’d shot everyone— DeMarco, Emma, Li Mei, and Li Mei’s three men— with tranquilizer darts. The dart gun had been Carmody’s second weapon, the weapon that Emma hadn’t recognized. He took Li Mei with him in Li Mei’s car. The car was eventually found in Baltimore, near the harbor, and in the trunk of the car were the files that Carmody and Washburn had stolen for Li Mei.

  Carmody also must have called the police at some point and told them about the unconscious people at the Columbia Island Marina. When DeMarco came to, there were both cops and paramedics looking down at him. DeMarco, Emma, and the three Chinese gangsters were lying together in the parking lot, handcuffed with plastic ties. The cops didn’t know what had happened at the marina but when they found three Uzis, one of which had been fired, and a boat with bullet holes in its hull, they decided to treat everybody as criminals until they could sort things out.

  The first thing DeMarco told the cops was that Mahoney had been kidnapped. The cops told DeMarco that the Speaker had escaped his captors. In the three hours that DeMarco had been unconscious, every law enforcement agency on the eastern seaboard had become aware of Mahoney’s kidnapping and was looking for the three Vietnamese kids who had snatched him. The teenage gangsters were never found. They had hijacked a car just as Mahoney had thought they would, and vanished into the New Jersey night. The cops suspected they drove to a Vietnamese conclave in Trenton or New York and would hide there until they could be shipped out of the country.

  DeMarco had asked the cops to get word to Mahoney that he and Emma were in their custody, and half an hour later they were free— embarrassed but free. DeMarco had been conscious almost an hour before he remembered to tell someone that Diane Carlucci was tied up in his kitchen.

  But Carmody and Li Mei were gone. The FBI and all the three-initial spook shops were looking for them, but they had vanished.

  “This guy Carmody,” Mahoney said to Emma. “So you think there was a kid involved.”

  “Yes,” Emma said. “The shoe box we found in his basement made me think of it, and yesterday I did something I should have done weeks ago: I contacted some people Carmody knew in Hong Kong when he worked for that security company over there. They told me he kept to himself and nobody knew him all that well, but they said he was involved with a local woman. One of them said he thought Carmody had a kid, a son. He wasn’t sure, but he thought so.”

  A man like Philip Carmody wouldn’t have betrayed his country for money. Emma’s theory was that the Chinese government had used Carmody’s Chinese wife and son to force him to spy on the shipyard in Bremerton, and he did as little damage to the navy as he could while still giving Li Mei enough to keep his family safe. Emma thought that the reason Carmody had captured Li Mei instead of killing her as the Chinese desired, was that he wanted her for a bargaining chip. He would have told the Chinese that he’d exchange Li Mei for his family, and that if the Chinese government didn’t agree, he’d give her to the Americans. The Chinese would not want the publicity that would result from the capture of their rogue agent, but more important, they would be afraid that under interrogation she would tell the Americans things they didn’t want told. One man and his small family just wasn’t worth it.

  “He’s out there somewhere,” Emma said, “setting up the exchange of Li Mei for his family. And then he’ll disappear.”

  “And what do you think the Chinese will do with her?” Mahoney asked. Before Emma could answer he said, “Where the hell’s the damn Tabasco?”

  Mahoney’s head was swiveling around to find a waitress when Emma said, “They’ll kill her.”

  Mahoney shrugged. “After what she did, killing so many people to get at you, I say hooray for the Chinese.”

  “You just don’t get it,” Emma said, looking directly into Mahoney’s eyes. “If the CIA hadn’t bungled the capture of those two young people in Hawaii, her lover would never have died. He didn’t have to die. And this woman was a soldier. If we had treated her humanely, if we hadn’t tortured her, she wouldn’t have lost her child. That’s the thing that bothers me the most: her child. We talk about human rights then we act like barbarians. The CIA did it in Hawaii twenty years ago and we continue to do it in places like Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay. We have to learn to act better than our enemies, Mr. Speaker.”

  Mahoney grew serious for a moment and said, “I get it, lady, and I feel bad about her kid, too. But she was a spy and a killer and madder than a hatter. She had to be put down. But I agree with you: it’s too bad, all the stuff that happened to her.”

  Before Emma could respond, Mahoney signaled a passing waitress. “Hey, sweetheart,” he said, “could you find me a little Tabasco when you get a chance?”

  “Oh my gosh yes, Mr. Speaker,” the waitress gushed, and ran off to find the Tabasco sauce at a speed she would have normally used only to save her children from a fire. She returned within seconds and handed the small bottle to Mahoney, almost curtsying as she did so. He took the bottle from her, then took her work-worn hand in his and said, “Alice, if I wasn’t married, I’d…well, it’d make you blush if I was to say what I was thinking.”

  Alice’s plump face went beet red, her eyes fluttered like she might swoon, and you could almost see her stout heart hammering in her chest. Mahoney— old, overweight, and alcoholic— a man who said things so corny a screenwriter for a soap opera wouldn’t use such lines, and women found him irresistible.

  DeMarco, on the other hand, was pretty sure he wasn’t irresistible. He’d called Diane a couple of times— she was still in Washington taking the FBI training course— but so far she always had an excuse for not seeing him. DeMarco believed, as irrational as he thought it was, that Diane considered him bad luck, like it was his fault that Carmody had tied her to a chair. He thought she was beginning to come around though; he’d sensed a little more warmth in her voice the last time they’d talked. Maybe one day in the near future he’d make his lasagna for
her again. He hoped so. He needed someone like her in his life.

  The only happy person was Mahoney. He was delighted he’d escaped his captors on his own accord, taking a gun away from a kid one-fourth his age. He was in the pink— and he didn’t really care that they hadn’t caught his kidnappers. And the press coverage for what he had done— hell, it had been better than all the paid advertising in the world. Letterman had called yesterday and asked if he wanted to be on his show. He was thinking about it; he liked Dave, thought he was a hoot.

  “Oh, and I forgot to tell you,” Mahoney said to Emma, as he shook Tabasco sauce onto his scrambled eggs, “the navy looked at those classified files Carmody copied. He told you the truth: he altered the files, took out the important stuff. The navy says that if the Chinese had gotten their hands on those discs, it might have actually set their program back a decade.”