Submerged

by Thomas F Monteleone

  “My guard-dog,” said Dex with a lopsided grin. “Okay, outta here.”

  As they casually exited the neighborhood, Dex kept looking for any sign they were being watched or followed, but saw nothing. Either their adversaries were very, very good, or he and Tommy were still ahead of them. Crossing Davidsonville Road, they walked through a maze of back streets to an array of strip malls on the other side of Crain Highway. The traffic was heavy and everybody seemed like they were in too big of a hurry to pay any attention to them.

  “In there.” Dex gestured to a Giant Food supermarket, where he paid cash for two Trac phones, and some quick foods—nuts, dates, energy bars. Before leaving the store, Dex activated both phones by calling in the codes, then gave one to Tommy.

  “Memorize my number. Don’t put it in the speed dial, just in case.”

  “In case what?”

  “In case they get you or this phone. If my phone rings, I want to be sure it can only be you on the other end, okay? Same for your number—I’m going to be the only one who ever calls you, got it?”

  Tommy nodded.

  Dex dropped the phone into one of his cargo pockets. “They can’t trace any calls we make on these, plus we add as many minutes as we need with extra calling cards.”

  Tommy regarded him with quiet admiration. It was a look Dex knew well from all the Navy years, where he’d learned to be a take-charge guy, and he wore the responsibility like a hand-tailored uniform.

  “Man, it’s like you had this all figured out ahead of time.” Tommy chucked him on the arm as they headed for the automatic doors at the exit.

  “Not really. I’ve just been thinking some of this through.” He stopped on the sidewalk, pulled out the Trac phone, called for a cab. When they sat on the bench outside the supermarket to wait, Dex had plenty of time to assess the situation—and he didn’t like it much. He had been trying to figure who hit the Sea Dog and why, but nothing was making sense yet. Could be the Coast Guard or maybe the Navy if Kevin’s friend had alerted somebody at the Naval Yard in D.C.

  But Dex didn’t like it. He’d spent too much time in the Navy, and this scenario didn’t have their fingerprints on it. Same for the Coast Guard. This was either an alphabet agency or maybe even terrorists or some other rogue operation. And if any of those guys were after him, he didn’t feel good about his chances.

  He also used the time to have Tommy call Augie and explain things to the old guy, who was clearly an X-factor nobody knew about. Tommy asked him to watch around the neighborhood for anything suspicious around on the street, and to not let anybody in or near the backpacks with Dex’s gear. Augie loved the opportunity to be doing something useful and promised he wouldn’t let them down. Tommy told him to expect them later in the day.

  They waited more than a half hour for the taxi guy to show up. It was one of the local outfits whose major business was either runs to BWI airport or taking home drunks from the myriad bars in the area. There wasn’t all that much business midday, and that meant less than spectacular service. The old Caprice sedan that pulled up to the curb from Bay City Cab was downright skeevy. As Dex and Tommy slid into the grimy backseat, they were overwhelmed by the stifling afterglow of stale cigarette smoke. The driver looked back at them like they were bothering him, and Dex decided there wasn’t much chance of a tip in his future.

  Dex directed the cab to a bar on the corner of 3rd Street and Chesapeake, which placed them within walking distance of the wharf parking lot.

  “Okay, let’s see what’s going on,” he said, as they turned north on 3rd, then a right on Severn. As they approached the next corner and turned left to walk the long block to the wharf, they knew something was amiss.

  “Jeez, look at all the cars.” Tommy gestured at the crowded street ahead of them.

  “We are so stupid,” said Dex as they both stopped on the sidewalk. “I should’ve checked the news. Looks like the Sea Dog caught somebody’s attention.”

  At the end of the block, flanking the entrance to the parking lot to the 2nd Street Wharf and Marina, were the mobile transmission vans of all the TV stations in Baltimore and Annapolis. A police cruiser, flashers dormant, was double-parked at the end of the block. Tommy shook head. “We’re fucked.”

  “Maybe not,” said Dex.

  “How you figure?”

  “Keep walking, like we have no idea what’s going on. Like I said before, there’s not much chance anybody even knows you were onboard. I’d be surprised if anybody’s looking for you yet. When we get to the lot, you take my keys and fire up my truck. Start heading out of the lot and I’ll flag you down.”

  Tommy took the keys, nodded once. “I can do that.”

  “Yeah, but take your time. Give me a minute or two to get the scoop from somebody.”

  “Like who?”

  Dex shrugged. “I’ll see if I recognize any of the regulars. Otherwise, I’ll do what everybody else does, I’ll ask a cop.”

  “Jeez, you sure that’s smart? Suppose they’re lookin’ for you?”

  Dex tugged on his Orioles cap, adjusted his sunglasses. “I look like a million guys like this. I think I’m okay.”

  “You better be.” Tommy forced a grin. “Anything happens to you, I got no plan.”

  “Trust me,” said Dex.

  Tommy nodded and headed down the left side of the street, weaving his way through the vans and cars and into the gravel lot. As he did this, Dex walked straight ahead along the right lane sidewalk and up to a few young guys in dress shirts and ties near one of the news vans. They were either interns, techies, or maybe reporters.

  “Hey, man, what’s going on?” he said in a bit of an exaggerated Tidewater accent.

  The nearest of the group regarded him with a feckless expression. “Charter boat blew up out on the Bay,” he said.

  Dex revealed just the right amount of surprise, and asked some of the obvious questions, ending up with: “Any survivors?”

  The guy shook his head. “Don’t think so. The Coast Guard’s been out looking all day.”

  Thanking them, Dex turned and headed back down 2nd Street as he saw Tommy wrestling the F-150 out of the lot and in between a couple of vans. As he pulled alongside, Dex yanked open the passenger door and hauled himself in.

  “Where we goin’?”

  “Let’s get back to Little Italy and get our stuff.”

  “Then what?”

  “Not sure yet.”

  Tommy pressed down on the accelerator as they cleared the traffic, then glanced over at him. “So, are we safe, or what?”

  “Hard to tell. For now, we’re listed among the missing. Which could mean nothing at all.”

  “Huh?”

  “Could be a cover story. You know, so we’ll let our guard down.”

  “Yeah, well we ain’t, right?”

  “I’m thinking we did, at least a little bit, by taking the truck.”

  Tommy nodded, but his expression belied his incomprehension. “How so?”

  “When they finally figure out who was on the boat—whoever “they” might be…from the bad guys to the good guys—they’re going to see that everybody’s cars are still in the lot but one.”

  “So they’ll know you’re still alive.”

  Dex shook his head. “Not at first. I could’ve gotten a ride to the wharf with one of the rest of you. But that’ll change as soon as they get a look in my garage.”

  “Then what’ll they do?” Tommy had cleared the 6th Street Bridge and was angling onto Route 301.

  “You know, I’m not sure,” said Dex. “The bad guys will figure I’m on the run, which is a reasonable assumption. But…with me not showing up and talking about what happened, the good guys might have me on their list as a possible perp.”

  “Oh, man, you’ve got to be jokin’ me!”

  “No, Tommy, that’s how they t
hink.”

  “Okay, but how do you think of this stuff?” Tommy whistled a tuneless burst.

  “It just comes to me,” said Dex, but there was a part of him that wished it would not. Sometimes, he believed, being smart was more of a burden than he could handle.

  Whoever had hit the Sea Dog wanted them out of the way. Why?

  That depended on how much they knew about the 5001…or how much they wanted to know.

  Either way, Dex had to stay one step ahead of everybody, and one of the best ways to do that was run a little interference and drop a few obstacles in their path.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Sinclair

  East Camden

  “So what does all this mean?” said Entwhistle, who couldn’t hide his amusement.

  Sinclair didn’t respond right away. It had been more than an hour since returning from the wreck. The two of them had just reviewed the situation reports and recommendations from their Ops Center.

  Neither of which he liked very much. When he boiled it down and rendered off the fat, it came to this: he was off his leash and could run with the 5001 assignment in any direction. But he didn’t like the implications.

  “I say, still with us, chappie?” Entwhistle tapped his pen on the desktop to get his attention.

  “Sorry, just thinking things through.” Sinclair shared his evaluations of what they were up against.

  Entwhistle grinned. “Personally, I prefer it like that. Less meddling from people who aren’t up to their elbows in the muck, that’s my ticket.”

  “Glad to hear you’re so confident. I don’t like it.”

  “Why not?”

  Sinclair leaned back in his chair, cracked his knuckles softly. “I think Operations is throwing in the towel on this one.”

  “Why? How?” Entwhistle appeared surprised, as if he’d never considered Sinclair’s suggestion.

  “Because somebody upstairs is thinking they’ve made a fatal error. They shouldn’t have jumped the dive boat like they did. Too presumptuous. And now all they have is an empty sub and their dicks in their hands.”

  Entwhistle smiled. “Better than my dick, I always say.”

  “Right, but do you see where I’m going with this?”

  “Maybe, but why don’t you just tell me.”

  Sinclair liked his exec, but he had a penchant for waffling that bugged him. “They’re cutting their losses. They don’t want to look any worse than they do. We get the job of cleaning up the latrine, don’t you see it? If we find anything worthwhile, everybody gets credit. If we don’t, it gets quietly forgotten as another false lead that never panned out.”

  “You sure they’re not using this as a test—you know, to see what kind of stones we’ve got?”

  Sinclair shrugged. “Does it matter? All I know is we’re on our own here. So the real question is do we pursue, or play cover-our-ass?”

  Now it was Entwhistle’s turn to pause to consider his answer. After a few tugs on his mustache, he sat up straighter in his chair, placed his elbows evenly on the desktop. “Assuming the location of Station One Eleven could be extremely valuable, I say it’s worth pursuing.”

  Sinclair nodded, picked up one of the reports, which listed the identities and backgrounds of the dive club members and the crew boat captain. “Intercepted police reports confirmed that the vehicles of Cheever, Schissel, Mellow, and Jordan had been found at the wharf,” he said. “Only one car missing, an ex-Navy diver. McCauley.”

  Entwhistle shook his head. “Probably a fairly tough nut, eh what?”

  “Probably. So we need to decide—why is his car missing from the lot? Either he’d ridden to the wharf with one of the others, and it had never been there in the first place, or somehow he survived the attack.”

  “And came back to get his truck.” Entwhistle tapped the desktop with his pen. “Pretty plucky chap, if he did.”

  “We’ll need to start digging.”

  Entwhistle continued to speculate. “I mean, if the navy diver really did survive, and if he has any information he pulled out of the wreck, then—”

  “That’s two very big ifs, don’t you think?”

  “What else do we have to do? I don’t know about you, but routine assignments don’t excite me. And besides, if we do get lucky and pop the weasel, we get benefited at some point. That’s the way the Guild works, remember?”

  Sinclair did indeed. Founded on the principles of responsibility and the integrity of the transaction, the Guild had survived by always rewarding hard work. “Okay, so I take it you want to go out and poke around.”

  “You bet your arse… This is boring in here.”

  Sinclair nodded. They would be able to delegate the data haven surveillance to other East Camden staff without much of a ripple. They would also have access to any Guild personnel below them on the food chain. Assistance from lower-level techs, information clerks, and even tactical people would not be questioned. “All right, we move on this. How many extra people did they give us?”

  Entwhistle keyed up a screen, glanced down at the display. “Looks like three field specialists currently available out of Baltimore and D.C.—Wilson, Spruill, and Winter. Others as they come off assignments.”

  Sinclair considered the list. Good people all, but Spruill was the most methodical. He might be the one they needed to do some digging. “Okay, I’m going to get them out there ahead of us—beat the bushes a little.”

  Entwhistle gave him a thumbs-up. “Just give me the where-and-whens and I’ll get them moving.”

  “What about you? Anything else you want to throw out there?”

  Entwhistle leaned forward on the work desk, idly sheafed through the papers in the reports. “No ideas, really. Not yet, anyway. Anything I say is going to be rehashing…”

  “Let me hear it anyway.”

  Entwhistle exhaled slowly. “We wasted lots of hours mucking around that wreck. Now we need to make up the time. Whatever was on that sub got picked clean by our dive club friends. And let’s not forget the fissionable material, for Christ’s sake. They really fucked the monkey on that one, you know. No way to figure a bunch of amateurs would haul an atomic device out of there.”

  Sinclair shook his head. “We know it wasn’t on their boat. The team swept it clean—nothing. They also scanned that whole quadrant in the bay—no radioactivity.”

  “So where is it?”

  Sinclair had already been pondering the central question of the missing bomb. “There are only two possibilities—either they took it out and hid it somewhere or…it had never been there.”

  “Never there?” Entwhistle looked up from the papers he’d been scanning.

  “Either the whole story about the bomb was Nazi disinformation or the sub crew dumped it when the mission was scrammed.”

  “What’s your gut telling you?”

  Sinclair considered the question. “I’m leaning toward never there—in the bay, at least”

  “And why is that, laddie?”

  “Just a feeling. With that ex-Navy guy in the mix, I seriously doubt if he would risk trying to move an atomic bomb with, as you say, a bunch of amateurs.”

  Entwhistle grinned. “Good point, that.”

  “I think our best ally on this will be good intercepts from the police and the Coast Guard. They can do a lot of our work for us.”

  “As is our wont…”

  Sinclair stood up, uncramped the muscles in his neck. “Okay, let’s pack some gear. We’re going to need some weapons, false IDs, and electronics, the usual.”

  “I’m on it,” said Entwhistle. “And some travel arrangements, as well.”

  Sinclair nodded as the Brit headed for the door from the conference room to the operations center. Turning to his terminal, he keyed in a request for any additional police intercepts, and was surprised to see one fro
m the local Annapolis boys.

  Follow-up interrogation of witnesses at the wharf had conflicting information—there was a possibility there had been an additional diver on the Sea Dog. And there was a Camaro in the parking lot that belonged to a member of the Baltimore City Fire Department, which had been there since the morning of the dive boat’s last trip.

  Printing out the info, he knew it could be important. “I want Spruill to find out about that Camaro in the lot. Track down the firefighter who drove it there.”

  “I can get Spruill into Baltimore within the hour.”

  “Do it.”

  He felt good about their decision to pursue, and he felt even better about pulling it off. In fact, the only thing that bothered him even a little bit was the Navy guy.

  Navy guys could be trouble.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Dex

  Baltimore

  They got hung up in the rush hour traffic as they approached the city from the south via I-97, into overflow traffic where it fed I-95, then threaded their way around the harbor toward President Street. But for once, Dex welcomed the delay because the endless river of slow-moving vehicles was perfect cover for him and Tommy. If anyone was looking for them, they had little chance of doing it while they were in transit past the mixing bowl of ramps and connectors in and out of the city. In addition, it would be far better to have the cover of darkness when they approached Augie’s house, and he said as much to Tommy.

  “Yeah,” he said. “And we can get in through the back alley, it’s right past the Bocce courts. There’s a little wall right there—ain’t nobody gonna see us.”

  “Good thinking.” Dex paused as he switched lanes to avoid a UPS van blocking his view of the traffic flow ahead. “By the way, I’ve been meaning to ask you—you got any guns?”

  Tommy chuckled softly. “Well, legally…no. I mean, I got a couple big revolvers down in the basement. They were my uncle’s. Came with the house, and I have no idea where he got ’em. But you can bet your ass he never registered with this stupid State, or whatever you’re supposed to do with them.”