5 - Choker: Ike Schwartz Mystery 5 (28 page)

Chapter 55

Commander Hank Bellows, captain of the Seawolf class
Connecticut
, studied his target through the periscope. The old freighter looked like something from a time warp. Motionless, on a relatively calm sea, it appeared as innocuous as a cruise liner. A very rusty and seedy one at that. It was hard to believe that the brass from the CIC on down wanted it put on the bottom, no questions asked. Scuttlebutt had it that there were some very bad people on that bucket, and there was a “need to” out on it and three others like it.

He turned to his exec and told him to take a look. The image had to be enhanced in the early predawn. The freighter, at first barely a silhouette, loomed into sharp focus. Its name, in Arabic and English script, could be seen.

“It’s the
Saifullah
for sure. You have any idea why we’re putting this boat down, Captain?”

“Fleet says it’s a target—one of the old Libertys left over from II. It’s an exercise.”

“I thought all those old hulls were long gone, except the ones in maritime museums.”

“That’s the story.”

“So, tell me again. What the hell is this old piece of iron doing in our sights?”

“All I know for sure is that we are supposed to send a fish into it. Make that four fish. The top wants to be sure.”

“When do we do this?”

“We’re standing by. I think any time now.”

“Crew is on station, and the hardware is loaded and ready. Actually they’re pretty pumped.”

“Open the doors, Mr. Banning.”

“Doors open, aye. It’s not every day we get to sink something, even to practice. You did say exercise?”

“That’s what I said. You know how command works—need to know and all that.”

“Okay, I’ll buy exercise as the official story. As the man says, what’s the story behind the story?”

“My former roomie at the Academy runs SEAL team four. He tells me that the people on this target were responsible for taking out a guy named Reynolds, a class behind us at the Academy. He served on the
Jimmy Carter
a couple years back. He’s one of us.”

“No shit, the
Carter
?”

“What he said.”

“Anything else?”

“Nothing for sure, but if you listen real hard to the com chatter, you’d swear we are only one of a small fleet of intercepts out to get this ship and, I think, at least three more like it.”

“Jesus. Why don’t we just surface and blow this one away with an S to S missile?”

“That’s the funny part. The orders are to stay out of sight, stay quiet, when told to, shoot and leave the area at flank.”

“Follow up run if, God forbid, we miss?”

“With four in the water, that’s not likely, but nope, that’s covered somewhere else.”

“There are more of us out here?”

“Like I said, chatter sounds like ten or more here, surface I think, and maybe three times that number around the continent. It’s hard to tell. With all that, you can bet your ass this ain’t practice. Give me a range and speed.”

***

The sun, not yet above the horizon, lighted the shoreline a dim gray-green. Mist, more like low-lying fog, drifted across the cleared area near the bay’s edge. The tractor’s large diesel coughed to life, sending a puff of carbon black smoke skyward. The driver eased it into gear, and the cables that stretched from it to the decking snapped taut. The man who’d been watching them moved to each eyebolt on the deck and inspected them. Satisfied they would hold, he turned and signaled the tractor’s driver, who eased out the clutch. The big tires bit into the sandy soil and the deck began to slide away from the water.

***

Lights were on in the hut that the briefing had indicated held the missile firing control. FBI Special Agent Karl Hedrick, clad in a black tactical jumpsuit and web belt, and armed with a silenced nine-millimeter pistol, kicked in the door. Before it could recoil from hitting the wall, he stepped in. In the midnight session before they’d loaded up and come to this place, they’d hammered at the seriousness of the operation and the possible consequences of failure. The first of the shed’s two startled occupants hesitated and then lunged for a switch on the panel in front of him. Karl shot him between the eyes. The second man, seated beside the first, swung a shotgun upward at Karl.

Karl shot him, too, but his dead hand found the switch and threw it. Karl froze. A second passed, then another. No noise, no flash of light, no roar of rocket engines, only the distant rumble of the tractor’s motor. No launch.

Karl’s hands began to shake. He wiped his forehead, swallowed back the gorge that rose in his throat, and keyed his microphone. “Hut clear,” he rasped, then stepped outside and threw up the two donuts and three cups of black coffee he’d had an hour previously.

***

With the hut cleared, a dozen men, similarly attired in black and armed with assault rifles, materialized from the shadows and trained their weapons on the men working by the deck, which had by that time been dragged from the bulkhead at the water’s edge. Four were attempting to haul away the tarpaulin. The lead agent shouted for them to stand and put their hands in the air. He repeated the order in Arabic.

All of the men looked startled, then dismayed, and finally furious. They made a dash toward the water. There was no other way for them to go. They’d fenced the place to keep intruders out. Now the same fence would keep them in. Staccato gunfire from the road left them the sea as their only option.

The engines on the yacht twenty yards off shore roared to life. Its crew cut the anchor line, and the boat heeled over to speed away. The men on shore shouted and waved at it. It roared full throttle into Eastern Bay. At the same instant, the black ATF boat, now armed with twin fifty-caliber machine guns in its bow, pounded around the point to the west. The yacht’s crew foolishly began to fire at it. The machine guns shredded the yacht’s hull like tissue paper. It and its crew disappeared into the waves inside a minute. It would come to rest on the bottom not more than ten yards from the remains of Nick Reynold’s Cessna.

Some of the men remaining on shore spun and, cursing the FBI, drew their weapons. Only three of them survived the fusillade that followed.

Local residents, awakened by the noise, checked their calendars. Goose season wouldn’t open for another few weeks. Damned-fool city people…what did they know about anything?

Bunky Crispins sat up and shouted “hot damn!”

***

The sun cleared the eastern horizon and painted the
Saifullah
a bright red-orange. Men on deck busied themselves with clearing hatches, then jogged aft, and turned to watch.

“It’s a go, Captain.”

“Very good, XO. Shoot!”

“Shoot, aye. One away…Two away…Three away…Four away.

“Take her to two hundred feet. Right full rudder. Flank speed.”

“Right full rudder, aye. Two hundred feet, aye. Flank, aye, Navy takes care of its own, Captain.”

“Roger that, Mr. Banning.”

Epilogue

Ike had a fire lighted and fresh drinks poured. The smoke from the A-frame’s chimney made lazy tendrils across the valley westward toward the Appalachians, which now cradled the setting sun. It hovered, hesitantly, like a ripe tomato threatening to splatter the mountainside. He inhaled the scent of burning pine and oak and smiled. This was the best time of the year in the valley. Days were warm, nights cool and brisk, and the leaves on the hardwoods were changing to gold, red, and yellow. This was the reason he’d built the cabin overlooking the Shenandoah Valley. He stuck out his long legs and exhaled.

“You at peace, Ike?” Ruth sipped her drink.

“Yes. Are you?”

“I’m just happy you’re back in
one
piece. You didn’t have much of a vacation, did you?”

“It had its moments.”

“What happened to the big raid that your Acting pulled off?”

“The parents were upset, he said, but they cooled down. No thank-yous, of course, but no more lawyer threats either. They were more worried about Beyerson and the drugs.”

“Beyerson?”

“A teacher at the high school. Turns out he’s a registered sex offender in Ohio and was out of bounds here. Didn’t bother to register locally.”

“How’d he get through the background check at the school?”

“I’m not sure. I guess since he started out as a short-term temp, they weren’t too picky. Then, when they kept him on full time, they lost track. The month-old papers from Ohio were found unopened on principal DiComo’s desk. The word is he’s been reassigned.”

“What about the occult? Weren’t the kids dabbling in the dark arts?”

“There wasn’t much talk about the satanic business. Not the stuff of modern sensibilities, I guess. Blake Fisher was disappointed about that.”

“Poor Blake. No respect.”

“Well, now he has the makings of a sermon series. Did you know he’s getting married on Christmas Eve?”

“No, but then I’m not on the church’s ‘A’ list, either. Any other local good news?”

“Esther Peeper’s cat came home, looking a little worse for wear, after a prolonged tomcat absence.”

“I’m not quite sure that qualifies for the AP wire.” Ruth swirled her drink around in her glass. “So you managed to stop the baddies from destroying civilization as we know it?”

“Charlie says the whole business was shut down, so, yes.”

“What were you doing up there, anyway?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“You already told me the rough outlines Saturday. I want to know how you managed to fix it.”

“You know me—skillful application of cunning and duplicity. How else?”

“Will you stop jerking me around and answer my question? You’re not on their payroll. You don’t owe them anything, Ike.”

“You’re right. I don’t but…”

“But what?”

“It never ends, Ruth. All we did was stop one complex, and moderately sophisticated plot. They learned from it and will not make the same mistakes the next time. On the other hand, I’m not convinced we learned anything.”

“The next time? What do you mean the next time?”

“Those people are fanatics. They may represent only a tiny fraction of the population at large, but they hate us enough for a multitude. They will not be satisfied until they have destroyed this country, one way or the other. They will try again.”

“But now we know what the possibilities are and can prepare for them.”

“This plan was nothing like September 11. The next will be different, and the next, and the one after that.”

“Different? How?”

“Who knows? We have locked down our airports but there are still thousands of miles of unpatrolled borders, unsecured drinking water reservoirs, and seaports…then there are bridges, railroads. Imagine what they could do by pushing an abandoned railroad car over the border. God knows, the list is endless.”

“You are scaring me, Ike. When will it end?”

“When they win, or we wake up to the fact that we cannot forever be apologizing to our friends for wanting to secure our borders and destroy our enemies.”

“Surely they will change over time. This is the twenty-first century.”

“These folks do not live in the twenty-first century, or any recent one for that matter. I hate to disillusion you, but this has been going on for a thousand years. There is no end.”

“Ike, diplomacy is the way to end it.”

“For most folks, it would be. But when you deal with fanatics, it’s an entirely different game.”

“If we put their leadership away, then the rest will—”

“Years ago, when oystermen discovered that starfish were the chief predator of shell fish, they would chop them up into tiny pieces in an attempt to kill every one they found. Later, they discovered that all the separate little pieces they’d thrown overboard grew into whole starfishes. Instead of reducing the population, they unwittingly increased it by the thousands. These people are like starfish.”

“You sound particularly pessimistic tonight, my friend.”

“I’ve had a discouraging run-in with the powers that shape the democracy. I don’t see an end to this lunacy.”

“Well, you can chalk up one for your old pals in the CIA, anyway.”

“Actually, they didn’t score. The agency has a mandate to stay out of domestic operations. The government wishes to continue that illusion, and since the director is already under all kinds of heat from oversight committees for one thing or another, they handed the credit off. The president’s chief of staff nominated Homeland Security to receive the plaudits for foiling the attempt. Their people all got commendations and a lot of press for their successful action against terrorists.”

“I would have thought the FBI would be the nominee.”

“They get the credit for rounding up the men in Talbot County, Maryland—which in fact they did. No complaint there. The CIA received
bupkis
.”

“There has to be a way out of this craziness.”

“In my humble opinion—”

“Since when has anyone accused you of humility?”

“I said humble, not…whatever. It is my opinion that the wonks inside the Washington beltway are, as a class, clueless about what’s going on outside it, particularly in the ‘flyover states.’ Something happens to them when they take up residence in the vortex of power. I want to believe they’re better at grasping international things, but…”

“But what?”

Ike shook his head. “We live in hope.”

The two sat in silence for a while. Ike fixed them each a fresh drink.

“Well, at least you’re back safe and sound, and just as irritating as always, and with no obvious permanent damage done. I can be thankful for that. Are you going back to the beach now? You have week of vacation left.”

“No, I came back for Yom Kippur with Pop. I think I’ll stick around.”

“What did you do with your cute little airplane?”

“Charlie had someone fly it back to Georgetown and square the accounts. Why don’t you stay here for the rest of the week?”

“I can’t. I have all kinds of—”

“Work to do? Don’t you have a second-in-command, someone who watches the store when you’re out of town or sick?”

“There’s no one. I mean there are the deans, of course, and Agnes.”

“So, who runs the place when you’re away?’

“The dean of faculty.”

“Is he any good?”

“He’s a she, of course she’s good. I don’t appoint slackers.”

“How do you know?”

“She…I just know.”

“Call in sick. Get Agnes on the phone and tell her you have a bad case of the screaming mulligrubs brought on by an overdose of her amazing asparagus roll-ups, and crash here for a few days.”

“I can’t. Who’d…oh, I see what you’re up to. You’re not as shrewd as you think, bubba. You are trying to make me admit I can’t delegate. Well you are wrong.”

“So, you are going to call in, or not?”

“Just watch me, smarty, and wipe that grin off your face.”

Ruth disappeared into the relative gloom of the cabin. He heard her make the call, give Ike’s phone number to Agnes, and hang up.

“There, that’s that. This will make up for the weekend we lost to international terrorism or whatever it was.” Her expression softened. “I was worried about you, Ike.”

“To tell the truth, I was worried about me, too.”

Her face brightened. “Okay, I’ve done one for you. What are you going to do for me?”

“Anything you ask.”

“You said you were going to buy me a present down at the beach. Did you?”

“Yes.”

“Is it a blender?”

Ike withdrew the box containing the canary-colored diamond ring, flipped open the lid, and laid it in her lap.

“You could say so.”