Cam - 03 - The Moonpool (40 page)

“There,” I said. “See how they like North Carolina in November with no heat.”

“If Trask comes back, all he’d have to do is turn that back on,” Tony pointed out. “Let’s go get that master key and cut the propane service line.”

I called in the dogs, and together we made a sweep of the grounds around the greenhouse just to make sure no one was lurking. A fragment of moon was rising, throwing a thin wedge of white light across the river. If there were any boats out there, they weren’t showing lights.

The shepherds seemed to be glad to move around. So was I. Tony retrieved the bolt cutters and went back to disable the propane tank. The fuel was a liquid in the tank, but would evaporate into the night air once he opened that line. He was back in five minutes, giving me a thumbs-up sign and displaying a two-inch-long piece of copper tubing. We walked back out to our vehicles, alert but increasingly grateful to get away from that place.

“Let’s go find a bar and make some calls,” I said, loading up the dogs. “In that order.”

“Amen to that,” Tony said.

We went back to Southport and stopped at Harry’s because he and I had already reached an understanding about the shepherds. Having two of them with us at our corner table only seemed to reinforce said understanding. The first Scotch made me feel better; the second made it down to my throbbing arm. The pills had nothing to do with it. I reached Alicia by phone at the hospital; she reported that Pardee’s vital signs were slowly but surely rising from whatever depths he’d been exploring for the past eight hours. The docs were now contemplating stabilizing him into a medically induced coma to allow his lungs more time to recover.

I asked if they were treating her all right, although that bordered on being a frivolous question. Alicia Barter-Bell was a litigator who specialized in suing hospitals and doctors when they mistreated black people in Triboro. I’m no admirer of the tort bar, but after hearing some of her stories, I had to admit that the occasional shark attack was probably good for the hospitals’ QA program. Apparently, they were being treated very well indeed. She wanted to know if we’d caught up with Trask. I told her we were working on it, glad she couldn’t see the Scotch. She asked that, if we did catch him, we save a part of him for her. I was afraid to ask which part she wanted saved.

I rubbed my tired eyes, which made my arm hurt again. I probably should not have been mixing single malt with antibiotics and the residue of a really spiffy tetanus shot, but I didn’t care. Tony kept quiet, waiting for me to decide what we were going to do next, if anything. The bar wasn’t very full, and the few regulars present were all watching the TV along with the bartender.

My cell phone went off. It was Ari.

“Where are you?” he asked, almost too quickly. I told him.

“Aw, shit,” he said. “Someone’s here.”

“Where’s here?”

“I’m at home. The Bureau people are still at the plant. Everybody’s waiting for Trask. But I think someone’s—”

Sudden silence.

“Ari?”

Then the connection was broken. I hit the received call log, dialed back. Four rings, then voice mail.

Not good. I told Tony, who suggested we call Sergeant McMichaels, ask him to go see. Great idea.

McMichaels had gone home, but they promised to call him. He called me back three minutes later, and I told him what had happened. He said he’d send a car over there, but wanted to know what was going on. I suggested we meet face-to-face. He gave us directions to Ari’s house on the river. We threw money on the table and went over there in our two vehicles.

By the time we arrived, there were two cruisers there, both at the front gates, which they hadn’t managed to open. Sergeant McMichaels was standing outside one of them and came over when we showed up. It was cold enough that his breath was showing in the early night air. Snakes hopefully were expiring upriver by the dozens.

“I’ve got people inside,” he said. “You wouldn’t want to be asking me how.”

“And?”

“No one there,” he said. “One window broken in the back kitchen door, said door unlocked and ajar. Lights on, a TV dinner in the microwave, but no signs of violence. They found this cell phone, but nothing else indicating trouble.”

“Can I keep that?” I asked.

He looked at it for a second and then, obviously perplexed, handed it over.

“Anyone check the pier?” I asked before he could ask me any more questions.

“The pier?” he said. “Oh. You think this is the good colonel? Come by boat?”

“The not-so-good colonel, Sergeant,” I said. The three uniformed cops were listening, so I suggested he and I take a little walk. I filled him in.

“A greenhouse full of snakes?” he exclaimed. “I’d heard that was his nickname, but I had no idea. But why would he take Dr. Quartermain?”

“I think he’s going to the power plant. He needs Ari to penetrate the vital area security systems. It takes two people to get through the important doors, and his own cards have been disabled. He’s going to do something, but I don’t know what.”

McMichaels stared out into the dark river. “Do something at Helios,” he said quietly. “Do I need to trigger the area incident alert system?”

“I think we need to call the Bureau, tell them Quartermain’s missing.”

“Wonderful idea,” he said. “I’ll get someone to go have a look down at the boathouse.”

I had the RA’s office number on my cell phone, which I expected to get me a duty officer. Worse. It got me voice mail. I left a message that there were indications Dr. Quartermain had been kidnapped and that I urgently needed to speak with Special Agent Caswell.

We saw a cop climbing over the wall near the gate and went back to see what he had, which was not much. The landing float was wet, but there was a light chop out in the river, so waves could have done that. I wondered if Trask could have come alongside that float with a boat that big and still managed to tie it up by himself. It was possible, or maybe he had some help.

My cell went off. It was Creeps.

“Lieutenant,” he said amiably. “Quartermain kidnapped?”

I told him where I was and why.

“Oh, I think not, Lieutenant,” Creeps said. “I think we’re going to have to start calling you Lieutenant Bum-dope. I just got off the phone with Dr. Quartermain five minutes ago. He’s heard from Trask. We’re meeting at the container port in just under an hour.”

“The container port?”

“There’s an echo on this line,” he said. “Yes, the container port. Trask is arriving by boat, Dr. Quartermain by car, I presume. If he was under duress, he certainly didn’t sound like it. Homeland Security will be there, along with the usual federal suspects. Is there evidence of a struggle at Dr. Quartermain’s house?”

“Um, no, or not that the local police have found.”

“Oh, dear, you’ve gone and upset the local police? Is there a boss present?”

I said yes and gave the cell to McMichaels, who identified himself and then listened. I told Tony what Creeps had told me. Tony threw up his hands and shook his head. McMichaels thanked Creeps, closed the phone, and gave it back to me.

“Well,” he said, looking a bit embarrassed. “No harm, no foul, I suppose.”

I didn’t believe it. Not that Creeps was lying, but that Ari was on his way anywhere voluntarily. To prove that, though, I had to get to the plant, and there was no way the gate people were going to let us in. If I had a boat . . . but I didn’t have a boat, and it wasn’t likely the marina would rent me another one. McMichaels was rounding up his people.

“There’s no way Trask can just drive up into that canal,” I said to Tony. “We know they have that whole area under surveillance.”

“It’s his people who have it under surveillance,” Tony pointed out unhelpfully.

“How else could he get in there?”

“Get in where?” McMichaels said as he rejoined us..

I explained my problem. The sergeant gave me a patient look, as in,
Why are we still talking about this
—
you heard the Bureau
.

“People like to fish around power plants,” I said. “Something about the warm water. Is there another way to get close to the plant by boat, besides that intake canal from the Cape Fear River?”

“Certainly,” he said. “The tailrace canal. That’s where the warm water is, by the way. Not on the intake side.”

I wanted to execute a Polish salute. Of course that’s where the warm water was. That’s where those two enormous jets came out of the condensers below the generator hall.

“Can you lead us there?”

“I can, but of course I’d be wanting to know why.”

“Well, we’re not going to swim up the tailrace and break into the power plant, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“Oh, I know that, Lieutenant. You haven’t seen the tailrace when the plant is running.” He paused for a moment. “You get something into your head, you don’t let go, do you?”

“Not when I think I’m right, and especially when I hope I’m wrong.”

He thought about that. “If it were anything but Helios,” he said, “I’d be firmly requesting you to exit the jurisdiction. But.”

“But you know the government’s first instinct is to cover itself when they suspect someone’s made a big mistake.”

“Indeed I do,” he said. “Okay, I’ll take you. Let me get these boys on their way. Although getting in via the tailrace is just not possible.”

What I knew that the sergeant didn’t was that the plant wasn’t running. The tailrace would be quiet as a millpond.

McMichaels led us down a narrow dirt road that seemed to be going absolutely nowhere until we popped out on the banks of a broad creek. The perfectly straight banks indicated that it was man-made. No current was visible, just a strip of dark water perhaps eighty feet wide. We got out of our vehicles and walked to the bank. To our right, the only light was the occasional sweep of a lighthouse that had to be several miles away. To our left, above the trees, was the loom of the power plant’s lights, although the buildings themselves were not visible.

“I think I need to take these dogs for a walk, Sergeant,” I told McMichaels.

“I understand perfectly, Lieutenant,” he said with a grin. “By the by, I was just thinking that perhaps this would be a good juncture for me to resume my domestic duties back at home, from which I was so rudely summoned.”

“This would be a great time to be at home, Sergeant,” I said. “But may I please have your phone number?”

His grin vanished. “Look, boyo,” he said. “If you discover that some evil bastard has or is about to let the fire genie out of that handsome power plant over there, you call me at once. I kid thee not. We all love our power plant, but we have few
illusions about what could happen should all those smart boys manage to muddle things up, eh?”

“I promise,” I said. “I think what Trask has in mind is a scare, not a disaster. He keeps talking about a wake-up call.”

“Nine-eleven was called a wake-up call, Lieutenant. If the scary colonel has truly gone mad, he may no longer be able to tell the difference.”

Tony and I got our gear, locked the cars, and set out with the dogs a few minutes later. We had entered McMichaels’s phone number into our respective cell phones. Tony’s battery was fresh; mine was showing faded green bars on the battery icon. We’d put on our tactical vests. Tony carried a shotgun in addition to his Glock. I stuck with my SIG and sent the shepherds out ahead. There was a cleared walkway along the tailrace canal, like a towpath. I had Tony stay about thirty yards behind me in case we walked into something unexpected. The sliver of moon did little to illuminate the woods, but as we got closer to the power plant, all those perimeter lights made the moon superfluous.

Then we got a surprise. We saw the
Keeper
, or a boat very similar to it, sitting out in the middle of the tailrace.

We simultaneously faded left into the woods, and I waited for Tony to catch up to me. The shepherds came hustling back when they realized I was no longer following them.

“That our boy?” he said.

“Looks like it, but I don’t see any lights or hear a generator.”

We watched the darkened boat for a few minutes. Trask could be hunkered down on board and sweeping the canal banks with a night vision scope for all we knew. Or he could have anchored the boat, turned everything off, and gone ashore in that rubber dinghy. In which case, we should be able to find the dinghy.