Deepkill

by Michael Kilian

  “Special Agent Payne, this is Special Agent Westman.”

  “What do you want, Westman?” came the reply. “I thought you were transferred out of this case.”

  “I’m just following the memorandum of agreement. We have three DOA here on the Delaware shore. Apparent drowning victims, but I think narcotics may be involved. Salvage tug brought in an abandoned motor-sailor yesterday. They’re probably off of that. I’ve examined one body, a white female approximately twenty years of age. The fingerprints should be run through your—”

  Payne had heard enough. “We have every agent working the bridge case, Westman. Why don’t you guys keep this one?”

  “You’re not interested in any possible connection?”

  “If you find one, let us know.”

  “Very well.”

  “You have time for this, with all your port security duty?”

  “It’s called ‘the new normalcy.’ Two-hundred-percent use of one-hundred-percent resources.”

  “Well, the case is all yours.” Payne hung up.

  Westman clicked off his phone and looked past Dewey to one of the Delaware state troopers. “Bag the hands, bag the head, bag the body. Tell your medical examiner we want fingerprints and a thorough look-over.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Westman stepped away, looking up and down the shore. People were still gathered around, watching intently, though there was little for them to see.

  “Let’s go deal with the other two,” he said to Dewey.

  The two youths had come ashore about a hundred yards apart, making the job of crowd control all the harder, especially with the arrival of television cameras. Worse, the news media people had somehow gotten the idea these drowning victims were possibly linked to the bridge bomb plot. Running up to Westman as he approached, several peppered him with questions along that line—until the Delaware state cops intervened.

  Westman took his time with each body. One of the young men had an athletic build and seemed to have been in reasonably good health except for a couple of nasty old scars. The other was a lardy lump of a fellow with large, tubular eyes and several days’ growth of beard. Westman pegged him as an alcoholic or junkie—probably both.

  “The medical examiner may find otherwise,” he said, rising, “but they look like drownings to me.”

  “Off that motor-sailor,” Dewey said. “They abandoned ship too soon.”

  One of the youths had been wearing a pair of cut-off jeans and a T-shirt out of the Sun and Fun shops. The other was in a pair of cheap khaki shorts and a short-sleeved print shirt with crocodiles on it.

  “They don’t have the look of yachtsmen, do they?” Westman said.

  “I doubt they could have gotten jobs as deckhands on that yacht,” Dewey observed.

  “Where did that salvage tug take her?”

  “Wilmington.”

  Westman nodded. “Well, they’re not Middle Eastern.”

  “You done?”

  “We can wait on the ME’s report and a fingerprint match with the FBI’s data bank, but I doubt they’re anything more than some freelance drug smugglers who took on more than they bargained for when they got caught in that storm.” He looked south, where there was some dark sky building. “You want to continue on patrol?”

  “I’ll check with the District in Portsmouth, but I’m guessing they’ll send us back. They’re more worried about the Delaware River than this beach.”

  “Suits me.”

  The head boat was working waters much farther out than where they’d left it.

  “You say you know them?” Westman asked DeGroot.

  He lowered his binoculars. The fishing vessel had slowed. The breeze was stiffening and the chop had increased.

  “I know the boat. It works this area, right up to the demarcation line of the Henlopen wildlife refuge. The captain likes to make sure every one of his customers gets a fish.”

  Westman took another look through the binoculars. The blond woman was still at the helm of the boat. “There are no customers today,” he said.

  “You want to board her? Orders are to investigate any suspicious activity. In this case, suspicious inactivity.”

  Westman lowered the field glasses. “Yes.”

  Cat knew the Coast Guardsmen would be paying a visit the instant she noted their reduction in speed. There was no way to avoid them, but there was something that had to be done if their visit wasn’t to lead to disaster.

  “Burt,” she said. “I want you to go below and find a bunk and get in it. Wrap yourself in a blanket and pretend you’re asleep.”

  He looked to the cutter, watching as it lowered a rigid-hulled inflatable. “Aw, it’s all right, Cat. I know these Coasties.”

  “Get below now,” she said, “or I’ll never come out here with you again.”

  “Cat …”

  “Amy!” The girl had been ignoring all this, or pretending to.

  “Yes?”

  “Get Burt down the ladder and into a bunk. If you find any booze lying around, stow it quick.”

  “Okay.”

  Burt turned meek and allowed himself to be led below. Cat guessed he really wasn’t feeling very well.

  Three men were coming toward them in the inflatable from the cutter—an officer, an older enlisted man, and the man with gray hair, dressed in civilian shirt and shorts. She calmed herself, sitting back in the captain’s chair as she waited for them to come near. What could they do to her? She had no master’s certificate for them to take away. As they drew near, she turned again and waved—smiling this time—and climbed down from the flying bridge.

  The Coast Guard inflatable was small, less than twenty feet long. It had a machine gun mounted forward.

  The officer had a battery-powered bullhorn. “We’d like to inspect your vessel, ma’am,” he said as he brought the inflatable near. “We’re going to come aboard.”

  “Suit yourself,” Cat said.

  The enlisted man, an older, muscular specimen with master chief’s insignia on his sleeve, tied the boarding boat to the Roberta June’s rail. The officer and the white-haired man came quickly up onto the Roberta June’s deck, the master chief following after.

  “Sorry to bother you, ma’am,” said the young officer, a lieutenant whose name tag said “Dewey.” “This whole coastline’s a control zone now, and checking out vessels is part of that.”

  “I understand.”

  “Won’t take long.” He nodded to the master chief, who started moving aft, poking at the rows of stowed life jackets.

  The lieutenant was a boyishly good-looking young man, about her own age, but much like a thousand junior officers she had encountered in the service—eager, bright, with the program—though he seemed a little more gee-whizzy than most.

  He started forward, leaving Cat with the gray-haired man, who introduced himself as Erik Westman. He was as tall as the young lieutenant, but a bit more muscular. His face was tanned and weathered, a little hard, but pleasant.

  “Are you in the Coast Guard?” she asked.

  He was studying her. He had light brown eyes about the same shade as his tan.

  “CGIS,” he said.

  She gave him a blank look.

  “Coast Guard Investigative Service.”

  “You’re a civilian then?”

  “Chief warrant officer four.”

  “A couple of years ago, I would have outranked you.” It was a stupid thing to say. He’d have every right to be offended.

  “Navy?” he asked.

  “Tomcat pilot. Used to be.”

  “You’re a little young to have retired.”

  “I didn’t retire.” She said that a little too defiantly, but she wasn’t very good at hiding her feelings on that issue.

  “Lieutenant then, right?”

  “Was. Now I’m a civilian.”

  He grinned. “Then you outrank us all.”

  Dewey returned from a rather cursory look at the forward anchor gear. “May I see you
r vessel’s papers, please?”

  Cat went to a small compartment in the bulkhead near the main control station, taking out the plastic bag containing the documents. She had no idea whether they were in order.

  The young lieutenant went through them quickly, pausing at one. “The only master’s certificate here is for a Burton Schilling. Where’s yours?”

  She smiled sweetly. “I don’t have one. You can see my pilot’s license if you like.”

  “Miss, this is a commercial vessel. You carry passengers. You need …”

  “The master—Mr. Schilling—is below, not feeling well. I’m just taking over for him.”

  “What are you doing here?” He looked back along the rail. “Fishing? I don’t see any lines out.”

  “We’re just checking out the fishing grounds—for when the tourists come back, if they ever do.”

  “I didn’t know Deepkill Shoal was that good for fish.”

  “Burt thinks it is.”

  Dewey looked to the hatchway leading to the main cabin, then turned to the master chief, as though about to order him below. Westman intervened.

  “Unless there’s something you need to see, Lieutenant Dewey,” he said. “I don’t think we need to bother these people anymore.”

  Dewey smiled. “Fine with me.” He took a notebook from his pocket that looked like the ticket books traffic cops carried, made a few entries, then pulled a yellow carbon from it and handed it to her. She knew what it was, and was grateful. A yellow copy meant the boat had somehow passed inspection. If he had given her a white citation, it would have meant corrections were called for, and an appearance in court. She didn’t need that, with her reinstatement still a possibility.

  Westman started toward the rail, then turned and stepped close to her. “May I see that pilot’s license, please.”

  She dug her wallet out of the pocket of her too-tight shorts. She’d lost the medical certificate that went with the license, but she didn’t suppose he’d notice. At all events, it wasn’t his business.

  Westman studied it, turned it over, then handed it back. “Where do you moor this vessel.”

  “A little downriver from the Lighthouse Restaurant in Lewes.”

  “Thank you.” He gave her an odd, two-fingered, casual salute. “If you see anything suspicious, remember to call the Coast Guard.”

  Before concluding their patrol, they stopped two other boats, both in Delaware Bay, and made a circle around a Liberian-flag container ship bound upriver for Philadelphia. With its limited resources, the Coast Guard was able to search only about five percent of the container ship traffic inbound for the United States, and these searches were often cursory at best. But it was well to show the flag—and the deck gun.

  After they tied up at Cape May, Westman lingered on the dock. Dewey had to stop at the office to make a report, but Westman was free to go where he wished.

  “Will you be here for a while?” Westman asked.

  “Yup. Dinner break. Sally and I are going out for seafood.”

  Westman looked out across the bay. “Any chance of using one of your inflatables?”

  “Sure. Part of the investigation. Where do you want to go?”

  “Lewes.”

  Dewey frowned. The wind was loudly flapping the American flag flying above the harbor. “Pretty big chop kicking up.”

  “I’ve been wet before.”

  “What’re you after in Lewes?”

  “I thought I’d troll the fishermen’s bars, see what’s the catch of the day in the way of loose talk.”

  “You wouldn’t be trolling in waters where the catch might be blond?”

  “You never know what you’re going to catch,” Westman said.

  Chapter 13

  They’d driven to a state park on the Delaware side of the river, pulling to the edge of a small parking area that had a view of the hulk of old Fort Delaware on its low island out in the middle. The former Civil War prison was not what interested Pec, however. Rising from the New Jersey horizon in the distance were the gigantic, tapered chimneys of a nuclear power plant.

  Turko was sitting in the front passenger seat. Behind the wheel next to him was one of the well-armed men who had come for him in his Ocean City apartment. Pec was in the backseat just behind him. Turko presumed the Kosovar had his gun in hand, but it didn’t matter. He was not fool enough to attempt an escape under these circumstances. Not with these people.

  The radio was tuned to an all-news station. There was much less about the bridge attack than Turko would have expected. During the “top of the hour” news roundup they had quoted Justice Department officials as saying it appeared all the perpetrators involved were now dead, though they had identified only the man pulled out of the bay. The name they cited had been on a State Department “watch” list. The news report concluded with a member of Congress calling for public hearings into another FBI and CIA security lapse.

  After a commercial for a furniture store, a woman came on with the weather report. It would be sunny the next day.

  “What do you expect me to do with something like that?” Turko said finally, nodding to the plant across the river.

  “Not ‘with.’ ‘To.’”

  “If you are observed even taking photographs within a mile of such a place, they arrest you. I have watched this happen. We examined these facilities when I first came over. They’re very difficult. Maybe impossible.”

  Pec took something from the seat beside him and reached over the seat to drop it on Turko’s lap.

  It was a computer printout—the pages stapled together to make a sort of book. “What’s this?”

  “Read the cover page.”

  Turko stared at it. “‘Nuclear Insecurity: A Special Report.’” He began thumbing through it.

  “A private organization put that out,” Pec said. “It’s their second report about nuclear power plant security this year. It says the security guard forces at these plants have been tripled in size but are still not sufficient for what they must protect. It says they are poorly paid. Receive insufficient training. Are weakly armed. At many plants, they carry only pistols and need special permission to draw automatic weapons. When they have mock exercises, the guard forces are informed beforehand and the intruders always come from only one direction.”

  “Surely they have made changes.”

  “What you have is the second report. Most of these complaints were in the first report. Several members of their Congress made speeches asking for changes, but nothing came of it. The White House was not interested. The nuclear power industry doesn’t want to spend more money on security. The guards at this plant are paid less than the janitors there. It’s called the Farmingdale plant. I want you to attack it.”

  “I am one man.”

  “No. There will be four of you. I am bringing down the last crew I have left besides my own group.”

  “From where?”

  “You don’t need to know.”

  “No four men ever made are going to be able to break into that place and blow up a reactor.”

  “You could. It would be hard. Very, very difficult. But possible. What I want is probable. You may forget reactors. Your target will be one of the spent-fuel pools. They’re well covered, but situated out in the open, away from the major structures. You get close to one, blow it open, and the spent fuel they have stored inside will flow out and catch fire. This will be a catastrophic fire, filling the air with radioactivity for fifty miles, depending on the wind. It says so in this report. With a wind from the south, you could reach Wilmington and Philadelphia with it. There would be incredible panic, and all that means.”

  Turko imagined this. The image did not please him. “With four men.”

  “As I said, these people are trained for only one group of intruders, coming from one direction. Your group will come from two. One by land, the other from the river.”

  “They patrol the river.”

  “The Coast Guard goes up and down it, but they
never stop here. There’s a state police marine unit at the plant most of the time. Sometimes they are not there.”

  “Double fence,” Turko said.

  “A good-sized truck could break through it.”

  “Hmmm.” He meant that to be noncommittal.

  A tugboat was passing by, heading upriver without a tow.

  “It can be done, Turko.”

  “What about escape?”

  “That will be up to you. But it can be done and you will do it. Otherwise, I will not let you live. Do you have any doubt about that?”

  “No.”

  Pec dropped something else on Turko’s lap—an envelope thick with its contents. “Here is fifty thousand dollars. It is not really enough for this kind of operation, but it must suffice, and cover all costs. Our resources are now very limited. Your failure was my failure—do you understand? I dare not ask for more.”

  Turko put the envelope in his pocket. “How soon?”

  “You have one week.”

  “A week!” It was the same as saying, “Today.”

  “I am promising them a week. If I make it longer, they will send people to kill us all. Our leaders are impatient—and unforgiving.”

  “That’s not very wise. It should be a long while before the next strike. Two years, maybe more.”

  “Such waits are no longer countenanced. They wanted something big. The way it turned out, the bridge was not big.”

  “Why big?”

  Pec answered obliquely. “That nuclear plant is big.”

  They both gazed it, as though it held all the secrets of the earth.

  “Why do you do this, Pec?”

  “Because I need to do something and this is the best thing to do.”

  “No. I mean, why do you do what you do?”

  The Kosovar shifted in his seat. “I hate them. And I enjoy the work.”

  “I don’t.…”

  “Yes, you do. That much is clear. You enjoy it. I wish you were better at it.”

  “Sorry.” Turko did not like saying that. He did not feel apologetic.

  “It stirs things up, what we do. Our countries cannot sustain themselves otherwise. The Americans and the Russians will just trample over us. But if we stir things up, so there is chaos and confusion and fear, then there is a chance for us. Then maybe we can prevail.”