A Dangerous Breed

by Glen Erik Hamilton

  Liashko, and the second bodyguard. They were my concern. Both still in the cab?

  I looked at the door of the steel shipping container. One thin black vertical stripe appeared on the wall of green.

  The truck’s engine stalled. My ears cleared enough to hear waves lapping on the shore. A gull screeched overhead, furious at the intrusion into its peaceful territory.

  The stripe widened fractionally. A long tube extended out like a questing finger.

  I hit the dirt, covering my head with my arms. But unable to resist the temptation to watch.

  The Verba missile launcher was not designed for short-range work, by any stretch of the imagination. Aiming it by sight alone, at a ground-level target barely twenty yards away, was like tossing a grenade blindly in the same room in which you were standing. Maybe the bodyguard had fired a rocket launcher in the field and thought he had the procedure down. Or maybe he’d just reached for the biggest, baddest gun in his panic.

  A searing orange flash of light erupted out of the open container door. The backblast from the launcher. It must have singed everything in the steel box, including the man. The missile itself ejected ten feet from the tube before its propellant engaged. That brighter glare of light had only an instant’s life—which I barely glimpsed as I stuck my face into the crook of my elbow, my retinas already stinging—before the slender dart struck the logs from which I’d fired the shotgun a minute before, and the world erupted into flame and heat. Chunks of wood struck the boulder beside me. More pieces landed on the sand, blasted and smoldering.

  I looked up. The logjam was mostly gone, replaced by a blackened and still burning shallow crater. A fire blazed in the grass farther up the shore, and leaves in a stand of trees just beyond glowed orange as they curled and died.

  I waited.

  Another minute passed. The door to the container widened. A figure slipped out, black against the red of the truck’s taillights and the yellow bonfires the missile had ignited. He bent low, using the container as cover from where he thought I was. Wondering if he’d succeeded in blowing me to pieces.

  Liashko’s voice called from the front of the truck. The bodyguard didn’t answer. Not giving away his location. As I watched, he moved around the truck on the water side, maybe to check his fallen comrade, maybe to whisper to his boss.

  The truck’s lights went dark. An instant later, the interior light of the cab followed.

  I couldn’t see them from here. I low-crawled toward the surf, the ground scraping my stomach. Sand fleas jumped and popped out of my path. The reek of rotten kelp grew stronger as I wormed my silent way forward, to a better position behind a low dune, fifteen yards from the rear bumper.

  With the truck’s lights off, the only illumination came from the small dying fires. And the moon. Near to full tonight, low in the sky on the western horizon. Its pale glow made the two men look like puppets in a shadow play. One huge and round, one lean and stooped and edging ahead of the other. Perhaps to check for the remnants of my corpse in the burning driftwood. The bodyguard’s cautious steps as soft as rustling leaves.

  I fired straight into the center of his shadow, racked to fire again. The shadow crumpled.

  Liashko fled. A terrified and surprisingly fast run, over the smoking logs and toward the lighthouse. Instinctively seeking the nearest place to hide. I didn’t shoot. In the firelight I saw the arms dealer clutching my rucksack to his chest with both arms, like an infant he was protecting from harm.

  I caught him at the base of the lighthouse tower. He heard me coming, turned just as my shotgun butt was swinging for his bull neck. It clocked him on the cheek instead. He fell, even as I wrenched the ruck with its deadly nerve agent from his grasp.

  I checked it. Nothing leaking. Nothing broken. I was breathing hard, but I still managed to exhale a little more in relief.

  Liashko stared up at me from the ground. His face white around the punctuations of blood.

  Of course. He’d last seen me half an hour ago, as the black waves consumed the sinking patrol car. Seconds from death. The second time I’d come back from the grave, a scarred and bloody specter haunting him.

  Surprise, you evil fuck. I smiled at Liashko, and this time my grin wasn’t forced at all. He shrank away from my reach.

  I hauled the quivering man to his feet and marched him back to the truck to sit on his ass in the dazzling headlights, once I’d turned them on.

  His bodyguards were alive. They might even stay that way, if the cops got here fast enough. Like Burke, they wore their own tactical vests under the seasonal outerwear, and the armor had saved them from the worst of the buckshot. One of them hung on to my arm and said something in Russian, maybe asking for help, maybe still trying to fight. The other might never walk right again. I handed him his own belt and motioned for him to make a tourniquet above his shredded quad muscles, not sticking around to see if he understood. I flung their rifles far out into the lapping surf.

  While rifling through the truck cab, I found a long security cable with a padlock in the glove compartment. I used it to bind Liashko’s wrists and ankles together behind his back and looped the cable around the truck’s bumper before locking it. He wound up lying on his side, the damp sand and bits of seaweed painting one side of his big head. The padlock key followed the guns into the Sound.

  I took out my burner phone and dialed a number I’d memorized.

  Special Agent Rick Martens answered, his voice thick with sleep. “Wha—Whoizit?”

  I held the phone out to Liashko and pointed the muzzle of the Mossberg at his groin.

  “Say your name,” I said.

  It took him a few seconds to find his voice. “Anatoly Fedorovych Liashko.”

  I took the phone back. “Point No Point lighthouse. Get here fast.”

  The phone stayed on the truck’s hood, the line still open in case Martens needed to trace the signal. My rucksack with the canisters of nerve gas next to it.

  I ran back down the beach the way I had come, feeling exhausted, feeling unsteady, feeling like I could race the brilliant beam the lighthouse cast over the waves, and beat it.

  Fifty-Five

  After some discussion with the anxious Finns, we agreed to chart a course south along the coast before turning across the Sound to Seattle. Giving the second wave of chaos at Point No Point a wide berth.

  I watched the invasion through my set of field glasses. An SPD helicopter arrived first, then a sudden blossoming of lights onshore, red and blue and white, a second chopper, and what might have been a Coast Guard cutter. It was hard to tell; by that time we were miles away.

  Burke had gone silent and pale. Aware that his opportunity for revenge was gone forever. And maybe his injuries and the near drowning had stripped everything from him but his defiance. Harri had patched his lacerations with gauze and tape from my well-stocked first aid kit in the cabin.

  Now Burke sagged against the cabin wall, looking ten years older than he had an hour ago.

  “What was your plan?” I said over the drone of the big outboard. “To get away after Liashko?”

  Burke grimaced. “Anatoly was going to put the truck ashore at Edmonds. I’d ace him and his two lunks the second we touched land. Drive off in the cop car and call Martens to come get the weapons.”

  I hefted his torn WSP coat, my next question obvious.

  “I already had the uniform,” Burke said. “Looking like the law can be useful sometimes. The car I boosted earlier tonight from a substation in Auburn. Hardly anyone around during the regular week, they might not miss the car till Friday. After I was done with Anatoly I’d swap it for a clean vehicle I stashed in Shoreline with everything I need. Out of the state before dawn, out of the country by noon tomorrow. Spain to start. Maybe Mauritius once I got bored.”

  “Why was Liashko headed for Edmonds?”

  “Anatoly had a plane at Paine Field, ready to fly with the sarin.”

  Sarin. So that was the chemical weapon that we’d been p
laying Capture the Flag with all night.

  “You knew he had that lethal shit all along?” I said.

  Burke nodded. “A bargaining chip for me, in case I needed some extra clout with the cops.”

  “You’re insane.”

  He shrugged indifference. Jaak and his friends had found other places to be. Tough to do on a slim twenty-foot boat.

  Burke looked toward the jagged line of lights that defined the city ahead. “You turning me in?”

  “Why? You’re a damned hero.”

  He looked at me, puzzled. I jabbed a thumb back toward the blaze of activity on the point.

  “Liashko and the missiles in federal hands, and captured bioweapons as the cherry. You’ve disappeared. The prevailing theory will be that you took out Liashko and his men and drove away, almost like you planned.”

  Burke blinked. Started to say something, then thought about it for another few seconds. “He’ll finger you.”

  “Maybe. But he’s not a fool. If Liashko admits he knows me, he’s also opening up the part where he tried to murder us. For all he knows, you’re dead and deep underwater. The cops will find the sunken car only if they know to look for it. If he’s shrewd, he’ll claim he never got a look at the guy who shot up his truck and hog-tied him.”

  “The sailors on the cargo ship saw you, too.”

  “For a hot second. And the ones who got the closest look at me are dead now, thanks to Liashko’s firefight. Maybe I was Sean Burke, and the guy in the trooper uniform was just another grunt. I think their stories will be confused as hell. The simplest answer is that you learned Liashko was moving the arms early, and you decided to handle it yourself and disappear. That seems about your level of crazy.”

  “The Feds will never buy it.”

  “I think they’ll find a way to believe. Martens and the rest have what they want, and more. Why spread shit in front of the ticker-tape parade?”

  “Now who’s nuts?” Burke shook his head.

  I took a diving knife from the cockpit locker to cut the bonds at his ankles and wrists.

  “We’ll let you off downtown,” I said. “Get to Shoreline, get in your car, don’t look back.”

  We watched the city manifest as the speedboat sliced through the soft chop. The Needle in the north, the stadiums south. A rough bell curve of skyscrapers between. The moon had dipped out of sight, and there was nothing to dilute the shimmering reflection of the city lights on the water.

  “There’s something I gotta tell you,” Burke said, his voice barely carrying above the thrum of the outboard. “About Moira.”

  I looked at him.

  “I already know,” I said.

  Fifty-Six

  Palmer Stratton’s campaign headquarters occupied the first two stories of a narrow office tower near Denny Park, squashed between apartments on one side and a medical center on the other. I counted four different coffeehouses within sight of the entrance. Caffeine to keep the volunteers going, and paramedics nearby when they finally collapsed.

  I let myself in through the small loading dock in the rear of the building, took a freight elevator up four stories, found a stairwell, and walked down to the second floor of the campaign offices. It wasn’t difficult. Stratton had a private security team, but they were downstairs now with the man himself, along with all of the workers to hear Stratton’s latest pep talk. No cops. The U.S. attorney wasn’t governor yet.

  His personal office was in the rear. I knew that thanks to the half-dozen videos of tours granted to news services and community organizations, all readily available on YouTube. I think the campaign’s intent was to demonstrate that despite his blue-blooded upbringing, Stratton’s HQ looked like almost any busy office in America, with cubicles and cluttered desks and stacks of boxes and inspirational posters. All the volunteers smiling as they worked the phones and checked the latest social media impressions. One wall had been covered in pictures from rallies and other appearances. Another displayed a variety of graphic designs for Stratton’s official photos and his slogan: courage—character—community.

  The office was locked. I opened the door, locked it again behind me, and drew the blinds. Stratton had allowed himself a large window and enough space for a small conference table and a couch. Clutter from the outside cubicle farm had not stormed the ramparts of the candidate’s sanctum. The only pictures of himself here were framed family snaps of his wife, Carolyn, and their college-age twins, all smiling at the camera with an abundance of health and teeth.

  His rolling chair behind the L-shaped faux-walnut desk was comfortable. I enjoyed it while I waited, looking out the window at the bright clear January day.

  My birthday, as it happened.

  Ten minutes later, a swell of noise on the second floor rolled steadily toward the back of the building. I heard Palmer Stratton’s voice, talking jovially with his staff. The door opened and Stratton came in, with the blond campaign lead I’d seen at his fund-raiser and another two workers close on his heels.

  He stopped midsentence. “How did you get in here?” he said. I smiled, all modesty.

  The workers were staring, just as dumbfounded. The blonde turned to her boss. “Should I—?” She gestured back toward the office, and the guards who were no doubt minding the perimeter downstairs.

  I held up the brass medallion of Saint Brendan that Burke had given me. Suspended between thumb and forefinger, like I was about to perform a magic trick for Stratton. Watch carefully. Something might just vanish.

  Stratton stared, with the same look of foreboding he’d had when I’d told him to protect his inside man, Burke. Then he composed himself and turned to the staff.

  “It’s fine, Grace. I’d just forgotten our appointment. Would you tell Lyle and the others that I’ll be a few minutes?”

  Grace nodded, perhaps unconvinced, but she left nonetheless.

  Stratton shut the door and waited until he was sure no one was hovering outside.

  “We’ve been looking for you,” he said. “You’re more than halfway to an arrest warrant.”

  “Sounds like you’re still undecided.”

  He frowned sternly. “This isn’t a joke, Shaw. You’ll answer our questions. Has Sean Burke been in touch with you?”

  “I was wondering the same thing about you. Did Burke tell you he was going to disappear? That’s the kind of thing you’d want a friend to know. So they didn’t worry.”

  Stratton didn’t say anything.

  “My mother, Moira, gave this to my father, a long time ago,” I said, setting the medallion on his desk. “And Burke gave the medal to me,” I said, staying on course. “Saint Brendan. A patron of travelers, like Saint Christopher. But mostly of sailors.”

  “I read in your file that she died when you were a child.”

  “She’d been exploring her faith at the time, I’ve learned. I guess she wanted some reassurance. Tough on a girl, being knocked up in high school.”

  Stratton slid a chair from the conference table out, sat down across from me. Changing tack. “Liashko made noise about an American coming aboard the Oxana M and planting all of the arms, trying to frame him, before his lawyer buttoned his mouth. He may not persist with that alibi, but it’s sure that his team will try to muddy the waters.”

  “Keep me out of it,” I said.

  “Sorry.” He shook his head in mock regret. “You may not do time, but you have to be brought in. Tonight. It’s up to you whether you leave here in handcuffs. And you’ll testify if necessary. I want answers.”

  “Like father, like son.”

  His hand gripped the chair’s armrest. “Excuse me?”

  “I take after Moira’s side. Black hair, black eyes. Burke is dark complexioned, too; it threw me for a while. But you and I are about the same size, and back in your wrestler days we were probably the same build. Plus there’s this.” I tapped the etched image of Saint Brendan. “Sailors. You and your family. Regatta races, service in the Navy. And you’re Catholic. Why would she send a sa
int to protect an agnostic thug like Sean Burke?”

  “That—that’s a fantasy.”

  A rap at the door made him jump. The person on the other side opened it without waiting for a response. Margaret Stratton stepped partway into the room.

  “Palmer?” she said, then realized it wasn’t her son behind the desk. “Oh.”

  “Afternoon, Mrs. Stratton,” I said.

  “Mother, would you excuse us?” Stratton said. “We’re just finishing up some business.”

  Instead of leaving, Margaret entered and shut the door.

  “What was it you were discussing?” she said. To me, not to her son.

  “Family legacies,” I said.

  Her minuscule smile evaporated entirely. “I don’t understand.”

  “Palmer does. Tell her.”

  “Mr. Shaw,” Stratton began, before clearing his throat. “Shaw seems to labor under the impression that I’m his father.”

  “Ridiculous,” Margaret said.

  “That’s what I was about to tell him. Sean Burke has already admitted to being Shaw’s father. He informed Agent Martens of that, when he explained why Shaw had sought him out. And Burke also informed us about the DNA test that confirmed his parentage.” He nodded emphatically, back on message.

  “The tests confirmed parentage,” I agreed, “but it wasn’t Burke’s DNA on the swab he gave me. It was yours. He was covering for you.”

  “What are you saying?” Margaret’s pallor came close to matching her silver-white hair.

  “Burke told me that when he decided to turn informant, he reached out to the one guy in law enforcement he thought he could trust. Agent Martens was Burke’s handler on the case. I’d just assumed Martens was also his childhood buddy. Martens couldn’t have kept their prior history a secret from you, the man in charge of the task force. That would jeopardize any investigation.”

  Stratton and his mother exchanged a look.

  “But I had it backward,” I said. “You and Burke were the ones who knew each other in private school. Martens was his primary contact, as a go-between. Keeping things kosher for the eventual trial.”