by Jack Hardin
Ellie set her phone to the side and looked at her partner. “You did good,” she said. “Thanks for having my back.”
“I don’t like coming out on the losing end,” Hailey said.
“Yeah. Me either.” The pilot got them in the air, and Ellie laid her chair back and closed her eyes. With a miss here in Mexico and Katie having to deal with the likes of Carl, Ellie’s world was starting to feel off kilter. There was an easy enough solution to that, though. Major was a stabilizing pillar in her life. He had a natural way of keeping her grounded when things started to unravel, and some time on a fishing boat with him would be a balm to her current woes.
She reached over and brought out Pavel’s letter from his backpack. She read it twice, almost intrigued at Pavel’s level of ingenuity, and hating him for what he had actually done to achieve it. It seemed that the Petronoviches were destined to be her bane. They had eluded her, not once but twice, and she could only hope that the FBI was making progress in locating Peter.
Peter was still out there somewhere, possibly readying yet another attack. Pavel was somewhere out there, too, possibly the driving force behind what his son had done.
She may not have found him in Mexico.
But that didn’t mean she was done looking.
Chapter Thirty-One
The Altima’s wipers were unable to keep up with the deluge, sweeping back and forth across the windshield as fast as their factory settings would allow. Carl had slowed the vehicle to a crawl a half-mile back and was squinting over the steering wheel, trying to peer through the torrent of fat raindrops that reflected the glare from his headlights like millions of diamonds pelting the earth.
The red mailbox reflector finally presented itself, signaling to him in the same way a lighthouse will for a boat on the troubled seas. He turned slowly into the drive that led to the mobile home. The ruts were filled with water, and a couple of times the nearly bald tires spun out, only to gain traction again as Carl let off the gas and worked the pedal with a little more finesse.
He pulled up as close as he could to the steps, but a rusted charcoal grill, nearly completely hidden in the tangle of weeds, kept him from advancing as far as he would have liked. The steps began ten feet from his front bumper, and he drummed his fingers impatiently on the steering wheel while he decided if he should just wait it out or not.
An unexpected crash of lightning split the sky at the property’s treeline, and Carl jumped out of his seat and nearly punched his head through the roof of the car. That did him in. No way was he staying in the car. No sir, no how. He turned the car off, flipped off the lights, and settled the key to the front door securely between his fingers. Another heavy deluge of water cascaded across the car, and Carl figured that he might as well be getting out inside one of those automated car washes.
He hated getting wet. It was one of the reasons he never really showered. He cringed at the feel of water on his skin.
Carl waited briefly for a diminishing in the downpour and then hurled his door open, jumped out, and slammed the door shut before thrusting through the weeds and grass like he was navigating a congested cornfield. His boots found the steps, and he took them as quickly as he could manage, nearly slipping on an old candy wrapper as he neared the top landing. The wind lashed hard against the mobile home, bringing with it heavy sheets of rain that made it nearly impossible to see an arm’s length ahead. The porch light was out, and it took him nearly half a minute to find the keyhole in the dark. By the time he got the door unlocked and stepped inside, his hair was matted down on his scalp and plastered across his face like the legs of a nasty spider. The rain had soaked through his jacket and all the way down to his undershirt—the best, and only, shower he’d had in a couple of weeks.
He found the switch panel and flipped on the light. Nothing happened. He stepped carefully in the dark and made his way to the kitchen where he felt for the other switch plate. When his fingers found it and he flipped the switch up, nothing. He cursed under his breath and was starting to conclude that the storm must have killed the electricity when he saw the faint glow of the digital clock on the stove: 10:34. Weird. He slipped his fingers into his pocket to retrieve his phone. At least that had a flashlight option.
“Carl.”
Now, Carl wasn’t the type to scare easily. But maybe it was all the recent stress he’d been carrying around with him, or maybe it was that his skin was all soaking wet or that the lights were failing to respond—whatever it was, when he heard his name called, he spun around in a cold jolt of fear and the air rushed out of his throat in a timid and jittery squeak. “Whaa-huuttt!!”
No answer.
Carl gathered himself as fast as he could. “What—who are you?” Carl was terrified, but he was still self-conscious enough for both the tone and manner of his question to make him feel a measure of shame at how pitiful he sounded.
“That’s not important.”
“What...do you want?” he asked again.
“A lot of people would like to see you dead.”
Between the lights being out and the storm overhead, Carl couldn't see a damn thing. “And what about you?” he asked unsurely.
“I guess I belong to the ‘a lot of people’ crowd.”
Carl, who was used to being the one in control, didn’t know what to do with this unexpected turn of events. He felt something he never had before: weak in the knees. “Heh-heh,” he stuttered nervously. “Uhh, can’t we sit down like adults and talk through whatever this is?”
“You should have never touched Katie. No man should ever touch a woman like that.”
Alarm bells dinged and donged between Carl’s ears, and he became keenly aware that he probably should have checked to see what kind of people Katie was palling around with these days before he used her for a punching bag. “Hey-heyyy…I—I didn’t mean anything by it. Really, I didn’t.” In a sudden and unexpected surge of boldness, he took a quiet step forward.
“Her face looks like a Colorado sunset.”
“I get it,” Carl said. Another step. “You want me to apologize or something? I can do that.” Another step, and then he lunged hard and fast through the darkness to where the intruder was standing. Except that the intruder wasn’t there anymore. Carl, with his hands splayed and his muscles tensed for impact, only cruised into the air, tripped over himself, and splayed haphazardly onto the living room carpet after his head whacked the side of the coffee table. Lightning flashed silently outside and illuminated the intruder’s outline. He was angled over Carl now in a posture that made him think of a vulture towering over its prey.
“You… you should have thought better about doing something like that.”
Carl could hear it in the waver of his voice. He was in the middle of an internal debate; someone who wasn’t sure that they should carry through with what they had come here to do. Carl struggled up onto his elbows. “Come on now. We can—”
The gun erupted in a quick and angry roar. The muzzle flash coming off the end of the pistol’s barrel briefly illuminated the identity of the shooter, setting the contours of his face in shadow. Carl was thrown back to the carpet by the impact, and as he lay dying, his mouth yawed open and shut as he struggled to speak. He finally, with great effort, managed just two words: “You… you’re…”
The man came and stood over him. “I guess I’ll need you to keep that secret between us.” He leveled the weapon on the dying man a final time, and another crack rang out as the next bullet hit Carl between the eyes.
Outside, the rain continued to pelt the aluminum siding, bright flashes of fire flickering in the windows like heat lightning as the gun’s magazine was emptied into Carl’s body. Half a minute later, the front door opened, and a dark shadow moved out onto the front landing. He grabbed the door handle with a gloved hand and pulled it shut, then walked down the steps and moved purposely toward the treeline, the tall grasses and weeds gathering him up like the final curtain closing on the last performance of Carl’s li
fe.
Thin tendrils of white smoke filtered past his face as the solder melted across the wire and fused there. Peter hummed his favorite song to himself as he worked, checking his work at every step and making sure he had not made a mistake. He set the soldering iron down and focused his attention on the detonator.
The bomb in Tampa had been on a timer, and Peter had timed it perfectly so he could watch it go off from his position down the street. He supposed he had the bus driver to thank for that. He remembered that the news stations said his name was Ray. Good old punctual Ray. He had brought that bus down the street right on time. And Peter got to witness his own handiwork.
But this timer would be different. It was wireless, and Peter could detonate it at the perfect moment with complete control of when to send it off.
He pressed the C-4 tightly around the edges. It was almost like playing with gray Play-Doh. He loved this stuff. C-4 was extremely stable. Unlike nitroglycerin, it wasn’t sensitive to most physical shocks and wouldn’t explode if you dropped it on the ground or set it on fire. He could even microwave this stuff and it wouldn’t go off. It could only be detonated by a shock wave, and that required the right kind of detonator.
It was quiet in the old cabin. He had turned the television off yesterday. The national news coverage had moved back to other topics: Wall Street reaching new highs, Brexit, and the upcoming elections. The Tampa bombing was in the background now, the news station finding other crimes to sensationalize. Crimes that would sell the news and—dare he think it—entertain?
But Peter wasn’t done yet.
America would get one more gift from him before he rode off into the sunset with his father.
Chapter Thirty-Two
A mid-morning thunderhead cracked overhead, fat raindrops beginning to pelt the earth as Ellie pulled her El Camino into Major’s driveway and behind his black Jeep Wrangler. She stepped out and hurried to his side door, calling out as she walked in. “Hey, it’s me!”
Major was sitting on his couch with an open book in his lap. “Hey, kiddo.” He smiled at her as she settled into a spot on the love seat.
“How was Mexico? Did you find your guy?” He closed his book and set it on the coffee table.
“I wanted to take you fishing, but the rain.”
“They’re saying the weather will clear overnight. Let’s see...if you want to take me fishing, then that must mean that you didn’t find your guy.”
“Am I that predictable?”
“No. At least, not always.”
“No, we didn’t,” she said. “Every agency keeps coming up dry.”
Ellie had gone into the office first thing this morning, and after debriefing Phil and turning in Pavel’s letter, Phil had sent her and Hailey home for the rest of the day.
The FBI had made little progress in their efforts to find Peter. A hunter in Desoto County had stumbled onto a car registered to Cody Daniels. The car was clean of anything that hinted to his present whereabouts, and there were no tracks leading into or out of the area. Teams of law enforcement officers had fanned out across the county, checking homes and warning local residents to be on the alert.
“Ellie.”
She looked at him.
“You can’t fix everything you want to fix. This world is broken. Sometimes it needs more than one kind of glue to fix it.”
“I know.”
“You care, and that’s a gift. It’s one of the things that makes you good at what you do.”
Ellie had come here for her own peace of mind. But now, looking into Major’s face, she sensed something in him. A disquiet, perhaps, something that didn’t fit everything she knew about him.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
He smiled, but it was forced. “You caught me reading Faulkner. He always gets me seeing things in a new light.”
Ellie leaned forward and picked up the book, a clothbound version of Faulkner's As I Lay Dying. Major had always loved reading the old classics. One of his back rooms had several dozen clothbound volumes. He had told her recently that he had many more elsewhere, although he hadn’t said exactly where.
“You read a lot,” she said, “but you don’t talk about what you read. Why is that?”
“People aren’t so fond of ideas as they once were. They’re generally concerned with putting in their forty hours a week, getting their two weeks of vacation, and hoping that they have a decent 401k at the end of the line. I own a popular bar, Ellie. People come to The Salty Mangrove to get away and relax, not for me to bore them with ideas, no matter how great they may be.”
“Well,” she said, “you can bore me with it anytime.” She flipped through the book. The title page bore an inscription, scribbled in black ink: “For your friendship and dependability.” It was signed, “César.”
“Who’s César?” she asked.
“César,” he said, “was an old friend. He passed away last year. An incident while on a business trip in the Caribbean.”
“What happened?”
“It’s my understanding that he disrespected a business associate. They found his body on the deck of a bungalow. He’d been choked with a wire.”
Ellie blinked. “Oh, Major. I’m sorry. That’s terrible.”
He nodded thoughtfully but said nothing.
“Did they get whoever did it?”
Now he was staring off across the room, lost in thought. “No. No…they never did get him. He’s still out there somewhere.”
“I’ve got a lot of resources at my fingertips. You want me to do some after-hours prodding and see if I can turn up anything?”
He returned his attention to her. “That’s kind. To be honest, if I knew César, he probably fell into a line of work he shouldn’t have been involved with. I’m not sure his family would want to find out all the details.”
“Fair enough.” She continued flipping through the pages and stopped where she saw a page marked with pen, a phrase underlined in black ink: “How often have I lain beneath rain on a strange roof, thinking of home.” She read it out loud and looked up to see Major with that far away look in his eyes again. “Why did you underline that?” she asked.
“I’m not sure. Somehow, it just resonated with me.”
Ellie closed the book and set it back down. She made them sandwiches for lunch from items she found in his fridge, and when she left an hour later, she realized that had she not known better, she would have thought that Major was lonely.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Nico was craving a breath of fresh air. It had been nearly eight hours since he last surfaced the submarine and opened the hatch for a few minutes. Since then, they had been too close to American waters for him to feel comfortable coming up again. He felt safer the farther down they were, away from searching radar and the possible boat that might be cruising on the surface at this late hour. They still had plenty of oxygen left in their tanks, but between the stink coming from the buckets holding their refuse, the accumulated carbon dioxide, and the rank smell of their sweat, a lungful of clean air was at the forefront of his mind.
The knowledge that he didn’t have long to wait helped him focus past it. They were on the coast of Florida now. His watch told him that it was just after eleven o’clock in the evening. Two more miles until they reached the destination his cousin had pinpointed for them.
A bead of hot sweat dripped down Nico’s forehead and landed in his eyebrow. He wiped it away with the back of a finger and looked back to his map, which showed an intimidating scattering of outlying cays and islands that Nico was utterly unfamiliar with. The water was becoming more shallow by the minute, and soon they would be forced to surface. An hour ago Nico had shut down the engines for the final time, the batteries propelling them forward in ghostly silence.
Pavel was sitting behind him, watching intently and clearly feeling the palpable sense of anticipation that had begun to fill the tiny submarine. Nico kept his eyes glued to his sonar readings and depth chart, comparing them aga
inst the map and praying that he didn’t make a crucial mistake in the final phase of their journey. Carefully, he made the necessary adjustments to his controls and slowed their speed from eleven miles per hour to five.
“How much longer?” Pavel asked from behind him.
“Two miles.”
The Russian chuckled. “Two miles. My god. You did it, Nico. I am very happy.”
The two passengers had hardly spoken a word the entire trip. Pavel had spent most of the last three days sleeping. In his waking moments, he quietly and thoughtfully worked down a bottle of vodka. He had already gone through two of them.
Nico navigated around a small cay and reduced their speed even further as he guided the sub into a narrow channel. His hands were nearly trembling now. They were so very close, and he could only hope that the U.S. authorities would not be waiting for him when he opened the hatch.
The shallow water finally made him surface the vessel, and just before it broke the surface, it jolted hard and leaned to their port side, sending them both flying out of their chairs and landing hard into the steel hull. Pavel cursed loudly, and Nico felt a searing flash of pain up his right arm as the submarine broke the surface and listed from side to side.
“What was that?” Pavel demanded. He was on his hands and knees still trying to steady himself.
Nico winced as he grabbed at his elbow and tried to ignore the pain. He sat up and scrambled to set his chair upright and get back in front of his monitors. “I–I must have hit some vegetation. Maybe the roots of the mangroves,” he said hopefully.
Pavel came to his feet and picked up his own chair. “If you don’t have to do that again,” he said, “then please don’t.”
Nico didn’t hear him; he was too busy focusing on the path ahead. He slowed to just one mile per hour and then, half a minute later, felt the sandy bottom scrape against the bottom of the hull. He shut everything down and heard the loud scrape of coastal branches scrape both sides of the hull. The branches screamed loudly, sounding like nails on a chalkboard. The sub coasted further into the vegetation and then came to a stop. The location was perfect. His cousin had done well preparing the back end of the hidden channel. The plan had been for the mangroves to hem them in. By the sound of it, they would be able to get out without the sub tipping over.