Operation Barracuda (2005) (24 page)

Before Grimsdottir comes back with the access code, a pair of headlights swings toward the building. Uh-oh. I make a run for the fence but have no time to climb it. I hit the dirt and lie facedown as the car pulls into the parking lot and stops. It’s a Corvette. The driver extinguishes the lights and gets out. He’s alone. It’s too dark to discern who it is, even with my night vision. He’s Asian, I can tell that much.

The guy goes to the employee entrance and punches in the code. The door opens and he’s inside. I quickly get up and run to the door, switch my goggles to thermal vision, and note the keys that are still warm from his touch—9, 7, 2, 0, and *. I have no idea in what order they’re supposed to be. I snap a shot of the keypad with my OPSAT camera and adjust the controls so the thermal readings are indicated on the screen. Usually I can make an educated guess as to which keys were pressed first and last—the first one will be the dimmest and the last one will be the brightest. The difficulty is if a key is pressed more than once.

I take the chance and press the combination I think might be the one. It’s like playing roulette in Vegas—the odds are outrageously against me. Of course, nothing happens. I try a slightly different combination and again come up with zilch. Sometimes these keypads are rigged to set off an alarm if someone tries incorrect codes more than three times. Should I risk it? As far I know, there’s only one guy in the joint. I imagine I can take him, but it’s possible the alarm could bring others.

Before I take the risk, another pair of headlights swings toward the building from the gravel road. Damn! Once again I move around the corner of the structure, where I figure it’s safe to wait. The new car, a Porsche, parks next to the Corvette. Again, the driver is alone. He extinguishes the lights, gets out, and goes to the door. I watch as he punches in the access code but the door doesn’t open. He knocks. After a moment, a voice on the intercom answers.

The new guy can’t remember the code. I quickly draw the Five-seveN and activate the T.A.K. Aiming it at the door, I hear the following conversation in Chinese:

He punches the correct numbers and the door opens. Once he’s inside, I hear Grimsdottir in my ear. “Sam? We have that code for you now.”

“Never mind. I have it,” I say.

“It’s 9-9-7-2-2-0 star.”

“I
said
I have it. Thanks.”

“Oh. You’re welcome.”

I wait a minute and then go to the door. I punch in the code and hear the lock disengage. I peer inside and see an empty corridor illuminated by overhead fluorescent lighting. Slipping inside, I’m aware of voices at the end of the hall. The two men are speaking in Chinese and it’s difficult for me to understand them at this distance. I move farther down the corridor and slide into what appears to be a break room. There are vending machines, a couple of tables and chairs, a microwave and kitchen fixtures, and an employee bulletin board. Tacked onto the board are a couple of dozen color snapshots depicting a company picnic. A hand-printed banner reads, in English, HOLIDAY PICNIC, MARINA DEL REY HARBOR. I take a moment to scan the photos. They’re the usual silly poses you see at company-sponsored events—people making goofy faces with beers in hand, a guy grilling burgers and hot dogs, a group playing volleyball. Someone has labeled each photo with a small piece of paper written in Chinese:
Ken making dinner
,
Joe and Tom getting drunk
,
Kim and Chang score a point
. All the subjects in the photos are Chinese and are of varying ages, mostly men. I’m about to turn my attention back to the two guys in the building when I notice a shot of Eddie Wu staring at me. I’m sure it’s him. He’s standing on the deck of a motor yacht docked at one of the marinas. The boat is named
Lady Lotus
and from the proud expression on Eddie’s face it appears as if he’s the skipper. Sure enough, the label proclaims,
Captain Eddie and his boat
. I take the snapshot off the board and stuff it in one of my pockets, then turn back to the hallway.

The two men move deeper into the building. I creep along the corridor, moving from corner to corner, until the duo go inside a couple of swinging doors marked, in Chinese and English, DEVELOPMENT. Each door has a square window and through one I can see one of the men, his back to me, fiddling with something on a worktable. It’s not a leap in logic to assume that the room they’re in is the lab—the place where the GyroTechnics employees build all their crap.

I remove the optic cable from my backpack, switch it on, and slowly feed it along the floor and underneath the swinging doors. The headpiece just fits so I slide it through about an inch. I then open up the lens to a fish-eye and adjust the focus on my OPSAT. I now have a fairly clear picture of what’s going on in there. A flick of a switch turns on the audio, which is transmitted to my implants.

The two men are busy creating explosives. One of them has a block of nitro from which he squeezes a little at a time, like toothpaste. The stuff goes into a metal cylinder that the other guy places in hockey-puck-shaped containers wired with detonators and timers. They’re very similar to my own wall mines.

The conversation, being in Chinese, goes by fast but I’m able to pick up words here and there. I’ll be able to have the team in Washington translate the whole thing later.

 

The two men begin to gather their materials. They’ve made, I think, eight explosives. I retrieve the optic cable, coil it, and place it in my backpack. One of the men leaves the room and takes a nearby staircase to the second floor while the other one places two or three of the devices within the lab.

Damn, they’re about to blow up the place. Jon Ming must have heard of Eddie and Mike Wu’s betrayal and ordered GyroTechnics to be closed down. The hard way.

Maybe I better get the hell out now. While the two arsonists are busy planting their devices of destruction around the building, I leave the way I came in. It takes me three minutes to jump the fence, run through the trees, and find the Murano.

In exactly six minutes and twenty seconds, I see the Corvette and the Porsche emerge from the gravel road, turn onto Norman Place, and drive past me down the hill. I start the engine, make a U, and follow them.

Right on time, I hear a tremendous sonic boom behind me. The ground shakes as if an earthquake has struck. In the rearview mirror I see that the night sky is orange and yellow. The blast sets off dozens of car alarms in the area and now the hills are alive with the sound of honking.

When I get to the bottom of the hill, the two arsonists are gone. I’m not concerned about them. They’re just soldiers. What interests me is what they said about meeting a plane at LAX tomorrow. I’ll have to get the complete translation but from what I could gather, Eddie Wu is meeting someone from the Shop at the airport tomorrow. The Russian is flying in to close the guidance system deal. Could he possibly be Oskar Herzog or Andrei Zdrok? Zdrok surely wouldn’t dare set foot in the United States. I’ll let Lambert deal with the logistics of what
we
can do to meet that plane.

Sirens fill the air now. As I turn onto Sunset Boulevard, two police cars zip around me, lights flashing. A fire truck, its horn blasting, is not far behind.

I press my implant. “Frances? Are you there?”

“I’m here, Sam.”

“Is Lambert around?”

“No, he’s asleep.”

“Do you ever sleep?”

“Never. Field Runners load up on coffee twenty-four hours a day.”

I pull out the photo I took off the bulletin board and look at it as I drive. “Listen, do we have any information about Eddie Wu owning a boat? A yacht, maybe?”

“Hold on.”

While she’s looking, I get on the 405 and head south toward Marina Del Rey. If my hunch is right, I think I might know where Eddie is hiding.

“Sam?”

“Yeah?”

“There’s nothing in the files. But FBI agent Kehoe’s last report stated that he was investigating a lead at Marina Del Rey Harbor. He’s been on Eddie Wu’s trail.”

“The FBI is sharing that with us?”

“Yeah, apparently we really
are
cooperating on this one.”

“Where’s Kehoe now? Can we get in touch with him?”

“I don’t know. Why?”

“I think I have a lead in Marina Del Rey, too. I’m going there now.”

“Hold on, I’ll check with my counterpart at the Bureau.”

I exit onto 90 and am heading for the coastline when she comes back on the line. “Sam, Kehoe’s last report was transmitted two hours ago. He was observing a boat at Pier 44 at Marina Del Rey Harbor. He’s supposed to check in soon.”

“Doesn’t he have a partner with him?”

“No.”

That isn’t right. Don’t FBI agents always take backup with them when going into a situation like this?

“Mr. Nudelman tells me Kehoe went off on his own because the L.A. Bureau couldn’t spare another man tonight,” Coen adds, answering my unasked question.

“Kehoe sounds like some kind of cowboy. He could get himself killed,” I say.

“Can you tell me what you’re thinking?” she asks.

“It’s just a hunch I have. Let me check out something and I’ll get back to you.”

It’s four-thirty in the morning. I can find the
Lucky Lotus
, see if anyone is there, and still might make it back to the hotel before Katia wakes up.

PIER
44 is on a section of the marina called Mindanao Way. The harbor itself is part of Santa Monica Bay and is supposedly the largest artificial small-craft harbor in the world. (My OPSAT automatically comes up with these facts when I’m mapping out a location.) It also tells me that the harbor consists of over eight hundred acres. The breakwater is 2,340 feet long and there are two miles of main channel. It’s an ultimate example of joint planning and implementation of a major metropolitan recreation site. It’s too damn bad I’m not a yachtsman!

I get off of Highway 90 at Lincoln Boulevard and then turn right onto Mindanao Way. I park the Murano on the street and walk toward the pier. Nightlights illuminate the marina but there are plenty of dark spots to use for cover. Moving from shadow to shadow exposes me for a second or two but I’m not going to worry about it. Eventually I arrive at Pier 44, a private outfit that rents slips to those with the dough to pay for these kinds of things.

Eddie’s
Lady Lotus
is a ninety-four-foot Eagle/Westport Cockpit motor yacht. The lights are on in the salon and galley so I know there are people aboard. I see no sign of Agent Kehoe.

“Frances, you still there?”

“I’m here, Sam.”

“Send me the blueprints for an Eagle/Westport motor yacht. Ninety-four-footer.”

After a moment she asks, “You know what year?”

“I’m guessing latter half of the nineties.”

“I have three to send you.”

I go through the plans one by one and settle on the 1996 twin diesel engine model. It’s a match for the
Lady Lotus
.

If anyone needed proof that being a member of a Triad is lucrative, then this is it. I have no clue what a yacht like this might cost but I’m sure it’s in the millions. It’s a beauty, all right. And very private, too. There’s a walk-around deck but most of the floor space is inside. From the blueprints, I see there are three staterooms, three heads, a very large main salon, a sizable galley, and a comfortable pilothouse.

Now if I can climb onto the boat without rocking it and alerting everyone inside that they’ve got company . . . The only way on is by traversing the ramp from the dock to the deck. I’m about to do that as gently as I can when someone comes out from below. It’s a goon, someone whose job it is to keep an eye on the harbor. The guy’s most likely armed. I duck into the shadows as he scans the pier until he’s satisfied they’re alone. Then he lights a cigarette and strolls along the walk-around deck at a snail’s pace. I wait until he’s on the opposite side of the boat, masked by the pilothouse, and then I swiftly move up the ramp and onto the deck. With the lookout walking around the outside of the boat, I figure that any extra noise I make will be mistaken for him.