Grant ran some calculations through his head. Played with various scenarios to see which one fit the evidence. Number one was the fact that the dead guy had opened the package carefully and not torn the tape or flaps. He was therefore probably the man entitled to open it. Not some burglar stealing goods from the warehouse. Whatever his field of expertise, once he’d done what he needed to do, he had become expendable.
Grant nodded.
“Worden.”
Not a question this time. The ex-special forces bodyguard would have no trouble using the packing knife to slit the guy’s throat. The defensive wounds were harder to explain though. With that amount of damage, Worden should have been covered in blood but when he’d come in upstairs he’d been clean as a whistle.
Grant knelt beside the corpse, keeping out of the blood splatter, and took a closer look. The tiny stab marks on the face. The stumps of the fingers. Even the streak of white hair down one side of the head. He put all that together with the man’s slight build and obvious lack of physicality. Whatever Dillman paid him for, it wasn’t muscle. A skilled man then. A man who was fastidious about opening the package and had the small hands of a watchmaker.
The tiny scars on the face.
The stumps of the fingers.
The streak of white hair.
Grant stood up and kicked a loose apple across the floor. There were a couple of reasons for using sniffer dogs on imported parcels. One was for smelling drugs. The other was explosives. He looked down at the dead man. Watchmakers usually lived long and uneventful lives. Bomb makers sometimes made mistakes and paid the price. Shrapnel scars and lost fingers. Even shock hair after almost blowing yourself up. Grant focused on the stubby finger ends. There was no torn flesh. The stumps had healed a long time ago.
“Shit.”
Then he heard a rustle of paper behind him. He spun around. The apple stopped rolling against a bloodstained piece of paper. An untidy fragment in an otherwise pristine warehouse, probably dragged over there by the hungry rat. Hunt picked up the paper and opened it. It was an invoice with the familiar Hunt business logo on top. Hunt read it, then let out a huff of disgust.
“I didn’t order this.”
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
The invoice wasn’t for the contents of the package but it was indelibly linked to the cardboard box by the bloody handprint across the back. Probably snatched from the assailant’s pocket in a last-ditch attempt to cling to life after Worden cut the bomb maker’s throat. A futile attempt but compelling evidence. Not evidence of what was in the box, but of where Dillman was focusing his attention.
Grant took the invoice from Hunt. He wasn’t bothered about preserving it for fingerprints. This case wasn’t going to court. The bomb maker was dead. His killer was riddled with bullets in the top floor office. And the IRA bomber was still on the loose on the Boston streets.
“Are you sure?”
Hunt looked offended. “I didn’t build a business empire without being sure.”
Grant pointed out the signature at the bottom. “Big empire. You have staff sign these for you.”
Hunt waved the signature away. “It’s not who signed it, it’s where it’s going.”
Grant shook his head. “Hang on. Back up a minute. What’s all these numbers mean?”
Hunt ran his fingers down the columns of letters and numbers. “Product codes and quantities.”
Grant huffed his impatience. “Well, don’t keep it a secret. What is it?”
“Fuel oil. Lots of it.”
“Parts of your business must use fuel oil, don’t they?”
Hunt pointed to the delivery address across the top. “Not the part it’s going to.”
The fuel oil was being delivered to the Dear Island Treatment Plant. That meant nothing to Grant but somewhere in the back of his mind the name rang a bell. He rubbed his chin and tried to retrieve the memory but it wouldn’t come. He needed more information to break it loose so he came at it sideways.
“How do you know the treatment plant hasn’t ordered this?”
Hunt looked at Grant as if he were a child. “Because the treatment plant recycles Boston’s waste. It doesn’t use fuel oil.” He jerked a thumb towards a distant horizon beyond the far wall. “The storage tanks over there are full of shit and methane.”
Grant thought about that for a moment. He remembered gas explosions back in England but didn’t think they were caused by methane. Having a bomb maker tied in with a place full of gas just before the Queen was due to arrive was too much of a coincidence though. Add fuel oil into the mix and you had a recipe for disaster. A memory was beginning to work its way loose from the back of his mind. His eyes followed the direction of Hunt’s thumb.
“Over where?”
“Far side of Winthrop. End of the peninsula.”
The memory came out of the shadows with such force it raised goose pimples on his forearms and neck. He brought up the map in his head and scanned across to Winthrop, the small-town east of Boston where so much of his investigation had been centered. It was the town where the Irish family had been massacred. It was the police department where he’d been arrested. And it housed the yacht clubs that sailed around Snake Island as part of their daily routine.
The house on Oceanview Street was right under the flight path.
Snake Island was in the bay just off Crystal Cove.
Dear Island Treatment Plant was about a mile southeast along the peninsular road signposted from Main Street where Grant had filled up at the gas station. Opposite Belle Isle Seafood and just along from the Odyssey Grill. Where Grant had heard about the shooting on Oceanview Street and where John Cornejo had pulled in to turn around after picking Grant up.
Grant saw the road sign in his mind. He remembered standing on the forecourt looking out across the bay towards Logan International. Passenger jets came in low and touched down on the east-west runway. And a convoy of fuel tankers came across the bridge heading along Main Street towards the peninsular road.
“What if you were to pump fuel oil into the tanks as well?”
What little color Hunt still had drained from his face.
“And blew it up?”
Grant nodded. Hunt’s shoulders sagged. Neither spoke. They could both imagine the fireball that would destroy half of Winthrop and anything flying overhead. The blast radius would be enormous. The loss of life immense. It would make Dillman the most powerful suicide bomber the world had ever known. Not strapped into a bomb vest like the Gregory Hynes Convention Center. Standing on top of the terrorist world like Jimmy Cagney atop the gas tank in White Heat.
And it would all be Grant’s fault. Because he had fallen into the classic trap of misdirection. He’d been focused on a ground-to-air assault. Lulled into it by the flare fired from the deck of the Flying Swan. Guided towards Snake Island because it seemed like the obvious place and because Worden had blamed Hunt for almost ruining everything. Not an intentional decoy but just as effective. The army were deploying to a threat that wasn’t there. Grant needed Kincaid to redirect them, and fast.
Grant held his hands out, palms upwards.
“Cell phone?”
Hunt shook his head.
“I have staff for that.”
Grant thought about the office overlooking the warehouse floor and was out of additional storage and halfway up the stairs before he remembered his last phone call to Kincaid. The static and the cutouts and the poor reception. The storm battered the sliding doors to the jetty. Grant barged through the office door and picked up the desk phone.
Silence.
There was no dial tone. There were no telltale noises indicating a temporary fault. The lines were down. The storm was here. Grant cursed and went back down the stairs three at a time. Hunt was waiting at the bottom.
“Down?”
Grant didn’t need to answer. He glanced towards the back door. The car was parked out there but the keys were upstairs in Worde
n’s pocket. He thought about dashing back up to the office but dismissed it. If he used the car, he’d have to drive north to skirt the airport, then east towards Winthrop. That was if the army hadn’t closed the roads and the storm hadn’t closed the bridges. Grant reckoned he’d be out of luck on both counts.
The storm surge would be threatening all bridges out of Boston. If New York and the Eastern seaboard were anything to go by, the transport authorities would have closed the Callahan Tunnel as a precaution. The Coast Guard would be grounded except for emergency rescues.
The army had been alerted to the threat to the Queen. They would be on high alert. Anyone moving in the storm would be treated as suspect. Any road going near the airport would be closed and guarded. Even flashing his badge wouldn’t get him through.
Grant let out a sigh. He was out of options. There was no way of getting to the treatment plant before the RAF flew right over the blast radius with the most powerful woman in the world. Some scars never heal. Dillman was going to prove that was right. Because if he killed the Queen, the wounds would be reopened for decades to come.
He allowed himself a brief moment of introspection. Domino theory would suggest this all began when Grant agreed to cover Sam Kincaid’s night shift. One small favor followed by offering to help uniform patrol look for the missing child. All the rest—Winthrop, Beacon Hill, the flare in Boston Harbor—all stemmed from that one small favor.
The flare. Grant seized on that thought. Not the flare itself, but where it had been fired from. The deck of the Flying Swan. He drew the gun out of his belt and grabbed Hunt by the arm.
“Okay, Hornblower. How’re your sea legs?”
Grant guided Hunt towards the main sliding doors and took careful aim. He shot the padlock off and flipped the restraining bar. The right-side door was heavy but he slid it open. Keeping a steadying hand on Hunt’s arm, he walked down the ramp and into the storm.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
The deck heaved and canted as soon as the Flying Swan cleared the shelter of Sargent’s Wharf. Hunt kept the yacht as close to the shore as he dared, using the waterfront buildings as windbreaks and avoiding the rough waters of the south channel. This wasn’t a sailing day. The mast was up but the sails were furled. The powerful motor propelled the yacht past the Boston Yacht Haven and Club. Joe’s American Bar and Grill was shuttered and closed. There was nobody outside at the Christopher Columbus Waterfront Park. Boston was deserted.
Hunt held on tight to the wheel. The pilot station provided minimal shelter and he was already soaked from the spray coming off the harbor like hail. Blood seeped through the bandages of his bad leg. He used the other leg to compensate, flexing the knee and bending at the waist to keep his balance. He was very good at it. Grant was not.
The yacht took the same route as the last time Grant had been aboard, except this time, Hunt steered closer to the Seaport District for shelter and as far away from the airport runways across the channel as possible. Grant squeezed into the corner of the pilot’s station and hung on for grim death. Despite staying loose and balanced, he was thrown from side to side like a rag doll. Then the Flying Swan cleared the headland at the Pleasure Bay Marine Park and the waves really took hold.
There was no shelter from the wind howling across the bay. There was no respite from the waves crashing against the side of the yacht. Grant’s bright yellow windcheater flapped around his waist, the only bright color on a grey and stormy day. Spray stung his face. He banged his head against the control panel. His feet slid across the deck and his legs felt wobbly. His stomach did a lazy turn and he thought he was going to be sick. He swallowed hard and took a deep breath. In through the nose, out through the mouth.
The wide expanse of Boston Harbor was torn apart by the ever-strengthening wind. The harbor was protected slightly from the open sea by a string of narrow islands: Thomson Island, Moon Island, Spectacle Island Public Park, and Long Island. The Deer Island Treatment Plant wasn’t actually on an island, just the spur of land jutting out at the bottom of Winthrop. Quickest way by boat would be straight across the bay. Grant’s plan required him to sacrifice speed for safety.
And something else.
Hunt followed the plan. He headed south until the waves eased, between Thompson and Spectacle Islands, then east along the coast of Long Island towards the southern tip of Deer Island. No planes came into land during the entire trip. That meant all commercial flights had been diverted, leaving the approach clear for the RAF. Grant ran the timings in his head. Judging by what Kincaid had said, the Queen would be coming down from the north, her flight hugging the coastline until it came in over Winthrop. Strong headwinds from the south would be slowing them up. The fact this was a hurricane meant they’d have to land soon.
Grant nodded at Hunt. Hunt nodded back and began to shrug into an orange life preserver. They were running out of time. The Flying Swan approached the southern headland, hidden from the treatment plant by the sea wall and the shallow cliffs.
Grant shouted above the storm, “You okay with this?”
Hunt tightened the life jacket. “It’s only money.”
Two minutes later, the yacht cleared the headland and aimed for the jetty that stuck out into the bay. Two minutes after that, it exploded in a ball of flame.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
If the WCVB News helicopter had been watching, it would have seen a fascinating show. More exciting than the squashed dog on Charles Street. More explosive than the armed robbery that preceded it. The yacht bounced and swayed on the ragged waves. It cleared the sea wall and the lower parking lot and made a beeline for the industrial jetty. No longer hidden from the treatment plant on the ridge.
An orange life preserver stood out in the gloom.
A bright yellow windcheater stood out even more.
Then a hail of machine gun fire opened up from a building overlooking the bay. Some kind of control tower for supervising loading from the jetty. The shots were high and wide, stitching a line of bullet hits in the water to the right of the yacht. The bullet hits were immediately banished by rolling waves and torn white tops.
The gunman adjusted his aim and fired again. A three-second burst. A line of bullet holes punched through the starboard bow in a diagonal from the waterline to the bowsprit. Low and wide of the pilot housing. The third burst of gunfire was bang on target.
The window protecting the man in the orange life preserver shattered. The yellow windcheater flapped in the wind. A flare was fired into the sky. It was very bright in the threatening gloom. It curved upwards, then was blown sideways like a rocket taking a detour. The phosphorous was sharp and white. It didn’t fade, just flew away into the distance.
More gunfire. Another flare. This time the flare didn’t clear the yacht. It went down into the deck, then the Flying Swan exploded in a fireball. The hull was torn apart. The mast collapsed. The non-existent news helicopter would have seen all that, but the camera would have focussed on something else. The orange life jacket and the bright yellow windcheater being thrown into the water. Dull and lifeless.
The figure in the control tower window stopped firing. It leaned forward and peered out of the storm-lashed glass to make sure the target had been obliterated. A tall, confident man. Somebody not afraid to kill. Somebody who had killed before, many times. A silhouette that looked exactly like Mike Dillman, but it was hard to tell from the distance and low angle where the observer was looking from. The staff parking lot at the tip of the island.
Distraction.
The preferred tactic of all good military campaigns and quite a few arrests. If an army could get its adversary looking the wrong way, it would be easier to attack the flanks. If you could get your arrestee thinking of something else, it would be easier to slap the handcuffs on before he realized you weren’t just being nice and friendly. Jim Grant thought blowing up the Flying Swan was a bit excessive, but it definitely got Dillman’s attention.
Grant climbed ash
ore minutes before the yacht exploded. He clambered over the seawall into the lower parking lot and sheltered behind the boundary wall, taking a few seconds respite from the storm. He pictured Daniel Hunt preparing the fuel cans in the lounge. Through the narrow door and down three steps. Unscrewing the lids and spilling flammable liquid all over the executive stateroom. The yellow windcheater was fastened tight across the back of the pilot’s chair at the helm. The orange life preserver was fastened tight around Hunt’s torso. He was going to need it.
Grant peered over the wall and saw the yacht clear the headland where he’d abandoned ship and swam ashore. Hunt steered towards the jetty. Open and in plain sight. The windcheater stood out in the gloom. The last time Dillman had seen Grant wearing it, he’d been thrown into the bay by the Yorkshire policeman. Seeing it from this distance told Dillman all he needed to know; Jim Grant was on board and coming for him. Dillman wasn’t about to let that happen before the Queen flew overhead.
The machine gun blasted through the control tower window.
The bullets stitched a line across the water. Then across the bow. Then finally through the windows of the pilot’s station. Hunt shot the first flare into the sky. The last time had drawn an instant response. Today might be different. The storm would slow everyone down.
Gunshots don’t blow yachts up. They very rarely blow cars up either. All that bullets do is punch holes into things. If it's a person, then you could be dead. If it's a boat, you just end up with a bullet-riddled boat. The first flare was a beacon. The second flare was the distraction. Hunt fired into the stateroom and jumped over the side. The Flying Swan exploded in a fireball. The hull was torn apart. The mast collapsed. The pilot’s chair, still wearing the yellow windcheater, was blown overboard, joining Hunt’s orange life jacket in the water.
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