Deepkill

by Michael Kilian

  “Bear, the guy gave us a down payment. We gotta deliver.”

  “Right. So get up there and take care of it.”

  “Huh?”

  “Tell that Enrique in Philly what happened.”

  “Me?”

  “Have Roy drive you in the truck.”

  Roy Creed was the largest of Bear’s crew members.

  “You want me to go to Philly?”

  “Yes! Now. Tonight. Before they get too antsy. Tell ’em we’ve been ripped off and the Feds have the heat on heavy and if they don’t want any trouble they should stay the fuck away from us. Tell him he’ll get his five large back as soon as I can scratch it up.”

  “He won’t like that.”

  “No, he won’t. But too bad.”

  “Why me?”

  “’Cause you got diplomatic skills.”

  Leonard didn’t comprehend.

  “’Cause I’ll beat your brains out with that baseball bat if you don’t.”

  This Leonard understood. He started toward the stairs to the deck.

  “Wait a minute,” Gergen said. “Did you smack Mary Lou in the face? That how she got that cheek?”

  “Yeah. Why not?”

  It occurred to Bear this would be a good occasion to retrieve the ball bat and give Leonard the whack across the top of the skull he deserved. But he wanted his cousin out of there—and on the Interstate to Philly. He didn’t want to have to deal with Enrique Diller himself.

  “You don’t do that to a woman.”

  “Shit, Bear. You threw that girl from the sailboat into the ocean!”

  “That was business. And I didn’t hit her! And it was an accident! And she wasn’t my wife!”

  Leonard just stood there, swallowing.

  “Move out,” Gergen said. “Be back before morning.”

  “Don’t know where to find him.”

  “Roy will.”

  “Come on, Bear. I feel like …”

  Gergen had picked up the bat and was holding it fondly.

  Leonard departed, very much revived.

  Bear waited until the echoes from Roy’s truck had dwindled to nothing, and then waited fifteen minutes more. Then he went to the cabin Mary Lou and Leonard used when they were aboard the tug.

  She had put on shorts and a T-shirt.

  “Get naked,” Bear said. “I’d like a little payback for my troubles.”

  Westman drove up the shore to Bethany Beach in Delaware, stopping at a restaurant there for soup and a sandwich. There was little he could do until some results from the Ocean City crime scene investigation were processed.

  He reminded himself that an investigator’s most serious weakness was the conceit of belief in his or her own theory. The inclination was to pursue the theory to its ultimate conclusion, instead of applying skepticism and measuring it against all available contrary evidence. It was altogether possible—even probable—that he was wrong to link the Ocean City woman’s murder to the terrorist plot. Her death could be explained in a number of criminal ways. For all he knew, it might very well have been a jealous husband who’d been lying in wait.

  But he didn’t think so. He was more convinced than ever that there were still dangerous people on the Delmarva Peninsula, and that the Bay Bridge bombing was not the last they would hear from them. All theories were to be encouraged. They all had to be pursued to their ultimate conclusion. No idea could be rejected, just as nothing suspicious could be ignored.

  After his meal, he drove up Highway 1 to the Indian River Bridge, which crossed the channel that linked the ocean to Rehoboth and Indian River Bays. Turning off into the parking lot there, he chose a space that faced the sea. The tide was coming in, creating a small wall of surf where the channel met the sea. It was breezing up. Westman wished he were out there sailing.

  He turned off his engine. Reaching into his pocket, he took out his cell phone. He didn’t have to look up the number.

  “Admiral dePayse,” she said.

  “It’s Erik. I want to report.”

  “Very well. Go ahead.”

  He took his time, trying to leave out nothing. She was more interested in the murder of the Ocean City woman than he had expected.

  “I’m going to call the Bureau and ask that we be kept fully informed of all aspects of this investigation,” she said. “It sounds like Special Agent Payne needs some closer supervision.”

  “That’s fine with me.”

  “You’ve done good work here, Erik. But you shouldn’t have left that last crime scene.”

  “When Leon Kelly’s guy showed up, I thought it best if I made myself scarce.”

  “We’re not going to let ourselves be pushed around.”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Where have you been?”

  “I just told you.”

  “I mean last night.”

  “Believe it or not, I was working waterfront bars in Lewes, Delaware.”

  “What for?”

  “I wanted to learn what the boatmen might have been seeing out on the water.”

  “And?”

  “Nothing of interest yet.”

  She paused. “I’d rather you were more accessible. Your cell phone’s off too much.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “We’ll talk soon.”

  Westman drove to the nearby Indian River Coast Guard Station, calling Dewey on the radio. He was still operating up in Delaware Bay, checking major infrastructure on both the Delaware and New Jersey sides.

  They arranged a rendezvous at the Lewes pilot boat station in an hour and a half.

  “You want to join Sally and me for dinner break?”

  “Sure. My treat.”

  “See you then.”

  “Tim?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Was that head boat out again? The Roberta June?”

  “I didn’t come across it. But I never got south of Cape Henlopen today. With the winds this high, not a lot of fishing boats out.”

  “Very well. Just curious.”

  Cat had slept late and then spent much of the afternoon and evening on her computer, using the Internet to expand her knowledge of deep-sea exploration, maritime navigation, and elementary physics—as in the effects of gravity and momentum on falling objects.

  When her brain could take no more, she made herself a dinner of microwaved Lean Cuisine macaroni and cheese, washed down with a glass of Almaden Mountain Burgundy, then went for a walk.

  It took her to the Lighthouse Restaurant and its bar. She nursed two whiskeys late into the evening, but the Coast Guardsman never showed. Weary now, she paid her bill and headed back for her house. She was sad, lonely, and not a little irritated, but the time had not been wasted. She had hit upon an idea.

  Chapter 16

  Once again it was near dawn, and once again Burt Schilling was on his screened-in porch, smoking and drinking.

  He’d had the four hours of uninterrupted sleep that was about the maximum any long-term alcoholic could hope for. The doctors had explained all this—how the nervous system reacted to the anesthesia of ethanol with wild reciprocal swings in the other direction that over time would eventually lead to delirium tremens and death.

  So fucking what, he had thought. In the meantime, it was manageable. Four hours of sleep, a couple hours of fighting off those wild swings with shots of hootch and cigarettes, and then a few more hours of sleep. Then the day, whatever that was worth.

  Cat had come home late without stopping by and her upstairs light had gone out almost immediately after she’d turned it on. Burt thought of her on her bed. A girl who took nude swims at dawn assuredly must sleep naked—certainly during the summer.

  There was a night during his time in the Air Force when he and an Air Force buddy had gone into a San Antonio bar and flipped a coin for the blond they spotted sitting in a corner booth with another woman. Burt had lost the toss and ended up with the other lady, a brunette almost as attractive—Roberta June. It had been a story with a happy
ending. His buddy had married the blond and Burt had hitched up with Junie. But life had gone on beyond the happy ending.

  For years he’d wondered what would have happened if he’d won the toss and gotten the blond. Now he wished he’d won and that the blond somehow could have been Cat.

  What a gyp life could be. He meets the girl of his dreams at an age when even hard-up middle-aged divorcees wouldn’t look at him.

  She had promised to help him find his bombs. She wasn’t going to take the Iowa flying job until then. He would have to be content with that. It was more than he had a right to expect, though he wasn’t certain what had prompted her to make the promise.

  Throughout his life, Burt had continued to read Air Force magazine and other military publications. He’d followed the retrieval of the wreckage from the TWA Flight 800 disaster off Long Island in 1996 every inch of the way. He knew that, once the bombs were located, recovery should be fairly easy—with the right equipment.

  But what was really needed was underwater side-seeing sonar, submersible video cameras, scanners that could produce an underwater topographical map of the bottom and the objects upon it, grapplers strong enough to pull up the weight involved—maybe a dredge for undersea digging.

  Only the military could provide that, and the military had told him thanks but no, thanks:

  But if they located the bombs, then the Air Force would have to listen. Hell, more than listen, they’d have to act.

  The sky was getting lighter. It was time and then some for her morning swim. But she wasn’t stirring. Something in her life had changed.

  The sound of a screen door loudly closing snapped him wide awake. He looked to see Cat, fully clothed in shorts, shirt, and boating shoes, walking across his sandy patch of lawn.

  “Up early again, I see,” she said. “Good. Go brush your teeth and wash up a little, then come get in my Jeep.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Ocean City Airport.”

  “Mr. Westman, lay to on the quarterdeck.”

  Erik reflexively sat up in his bunk, swinging his legs over the side. He rubbed his eyes a moment, feeling the engine vibrations and the gentle rise and fall of a vessel under way. He stood up and got dressed. When aboard ship, you did as instructed.

  “What’s up?” he said to Master Chief DeGroot.

  “You got a radio message from Ops.” He nodded toward a notepad on the chart table.

  It was from Special Agent Kelly. He was to call at once. Taking out his cell phone, he did so.

  “Wait a minute,” the FBI man said. He took more than a minute going from one place to another. When he came back on, the background noise had changed. Westman heard a truck’s horn. “We scored big,” Kelly said.

  “Great. How?”

  “Recovered blood and fingerprints from that apartment.”

  “Not the woman’s.”

  “No, the other one across the alley. Several sets of prints. Thirty-two-caliber bullet found in a wall. It looks like a second homicide. The body removed, just like hers. Maybe dumped in Assawoman Bay, just like hers.”

  “She probably saw it happen and they eliminated her as a witness.”

  “Sounds probable. Listen, Erik. The dumb bastards left a car. They cleaned out that apartment and left a vehicle behind. A rental car.”

  “Are you sure it’s connected to the apartment?”

  “No. But the rental car company has a driver’s license and a signature on the contract. What did that waitress of yours say was the name on that guy’s credit card?”

  “Bertolucci.”

  “Bingo.”

  “What state issued the license?”

  “New Jersey.”

  “You’ll have a photo.”

  “Trenton’s e-mailing us the image, but I don’t think headquarters is interested in disseminating it. Something about not wanting to spook the terrorists until we can grab the whole ring.”

  “That’s ridiculous. You could end up grabbing the whole ring after they’ve made another strike. The bridge bombing came very close to succeeding.”

  “Not my call, Erik.”

  “Can you send me a bootleg copy to the Manteo?”

  “What will you do with it?”

  “Assist in the investigation.”

  “Payne doesn’t know about your involvement—with the Ocean City case.”

  “I’m aboard a cutter. I don’t think we’re going to run into each other.”

  “It’s my ass if he finds out.”

  “I’m sensitive to that.”

  “We’ll stay in touch.”

  Westman clicked off. DeGroot was heading the Manteo into Delaware Bay again.

  “You’re not going out into deep water today?”

  “Orders are to patrol the bay.”

  They were passing the beach that lay at the end of Lewes’s Savannah Road. Somewhere on the other side of the low dunes was Catherine McGrath’s house.

  Westman poured himself a cup of coffee.

  Cat sat holding the Cessna’s control wheel with one hand while peering up at the sky above her. It was overcast with some scattered clouds and occasional rain showers, but the ceiling otherwise was a good ten thousand feet and visibility in most places good. She could see patches of sunlight both up and down the coast in the distance.

  She’d noticed no other aircraft aloft, not even the combat air patrol that was supposed to be in the area. Her worry was radar, which is why she was flying some twenty feet above the watery deck.

  No one was pursuing her. The Ocean City airport had been deserted. There were two Air National Guard C-130’s parked on the ramp—transports that had been used to bring some reinforcements to the National Guard camp at Bethany Beach after the bridge attack. Otherwise, there wasn’t a sign of the military.

  “You sure we’re going to be able to pull this off?” said Burt, in the seat beside her.

  “The hard part is going to be getting close to Dover.”

  “You won’t need to go as far as the outer marker.”

  “If I get that close, they’ll fire a missile at me.”

  “I remember our altitude crossing the shoreline at Kitts Hummock. It was always the same. About three hundred feet. Anything much different, I was worried.”

  She adjusted her throttle and trim. They were flying along the row of nine-story-high apartment buildings at Bethany Beach called Sea Colony, and the structures were causing disruptions of the wind. Looking left, she could see people on balconies watching her. At this early hour, though, the beach was largely deserted.

  A puff of updraft lifted the starboard wing. She corrected.

  “You’re sure this is all right with your boss?” Burt said.

  “He gave me permission weeks ago to use it as long as we weren’t flying streamers and I paid for the avgas.”

  Burt squinted at her. “What about the CAP?”

  “I’ll tell him I forgot about it.”

  “They won’t accept that as an excuse.”

  “What’re they going to do, court-martial me?”

  There were two fishing boats coming out of the Indian River channel as she flew by the Highway 1 bridge. The ribbon of land ahead between the inland bays and the sea was largely free of houses and buildings—Rehoboth Bay oddly sparkling in hazy sun on the left, the surf breaking along the wide breach on the right side of the roadway.

  Sweeping along the town of Rehoboth just off its long boardwalk, Cat switched frequencies of her radio to learn if anyone was calling her. She’d switched off the plane’s transponder, which was illegal. So was flying at twenty feet.

  The dunes of Henlopen loomed ahead. Bearing off a little, she passed them to the right of the lighthouse, then banked hard left, heading up Delaware Bay, passing within sight of their two houses. Leveling off, she looked right and saw two ships—one the Cape May-Lewes ferry, steaming toward New Jersey; the other the Coast Guard cutter that had visited them.

  “They could shoot us,” she said. “T
hey’ve got a twenty-five-millimeter deck gun.”

  “They can sure as hell report us.”

  She had let the aircraft rise to a hundred feet rounding the Cape. Using the throttle, she brought it back down until it seemed she could troll the water with her hand.

  The landmarks swept by—Broadkill Beach, the Prime Hook Wildlife Refuge, Slaughter Beach, the mouth of the Mispillion River, and Big Stone Beach.

  Kitts Hummock and the Little Creek Wildlife Area were just ahead.

  “Okay, Burt,” she said. “Stay alert now. I’m going to circle over that marsh and recross the shoreline at three hundred feet on a heading of one-six-five degrees. Stay with me now.”

  “I’m with you.”

  She was at ninety feet when she reached the Wildlife Area, high enough to see the strobe lights marking the end of the runway at Dover Air Force Base. If any aircraft were being scrambled, she couldn’t tell. She couldn’t bother about that now anyway. They had to concentrate on their flight.

  Banking slowly to the right, her eyes on the altimeter, she pushed the throttle steadily forward until she reached the desired height, then eased it back as she tightened her turn. When the compass reached 165 degrees, she leveled the wings and headed out to sea.

  “Feet wet at three hundred,” she said, using the Navy term for crossing from land to sea.

  Burt was staring at the instrument panel.

  “Rate of climb’s too slow,” he said. “We were on four engines at this point.”

  She increased the throttle again. “I thought you said flying those C-130’s was like flying a house,” she said.

  “A pretty fast house. A house with four humongous engines.”

  “Did you reach three thousand before or after you passed Cape Henlopen?”

  “Before. My copilot could see it out his window.”

  “Well, we’re not going to manage that in this little Tinkertoy. I’ll have to circle until we do.”

  The skies were still clear of airplanes, but for hers. Someone was calling her on the radio, addressing her as “unidentified aircraft.” She switched off the receiver.

  “Three thousand,” she said.

  Schilling leaned close to her to look out the window on her side. “Straight and level,” he said.

  “That’s what I’m doing.”