Cam - 03 - The Moonpool

by P. T. Deutermann

  “How hot?”

  “Rems,” she said. Initially, that didn’t mean anything to me, but it sure got Ari’s attention. Then I remembered that our personal dosimeters measured millirems. Milli, as in one thousandth of a rem.

  I swallowed. There was a reason why that water was glowing down there. I wondered if the diver could see his TLDs.

  The radio tech on the bridge suddenly signaled a thumbs-up. One of the others helped the cop pull on the grapple rope, while the others began to raise the suspended platform to get their buddy the hell out of his radiation bath.

  The diver came up a lot faster than the body, which was understandable. He had something to lose; the corpse no longer did. But when the body broke the surface, my heart sank. The grapple had hooked the man’s belt at the back, so the body was bent in half at the waist.

  That wasn’t the bad part, though.

  From about the collarbones up, there was nothing but gleaming white bone. No skin. Just a blue-white, shining skull with no face.

  And certainly no ID.

  Until I saw the small, black knife pouch on the man’s right boot as he dangled, dripping, on the chain. I’d seen that knife before.

  “I think that’s Carl Trask,” I said, pointing to that boot knife.

  “Oh, shit,” Ari muttered. He stared at the faceless figure. The height, weight, general build made it possible. “I think it is.”

  One of the techs, looking a bit unwell, pointed a distant-reading radiation monitor at the sodden figure and shook his head. He signaled the bridge people, and the body was lowered back into the moonpool to a depth of about ten feet.

  Anna Petrowska was staring at Ari over the upper rim of her eyeglasses from inside the control room, as if asking Tony’s favorite question: Now what?

  Great question, I thought. Ari Quartermain’s face was a study in anxiety.

  “We need the second diver to go down,” he said. “That’s not a body anymore. That’s highly radioactive nuclear waste. We’re definitely going to have to entomb that.”

  A few hours later, Ari and I were sitting in the front seat of my Suburban sipping some Scotch from my emergency flask. To say that things had become complicated would be the understatement of the year.

  First, they’d had to get the second, unexposed diver suited up and into the water to bag the body, which was now suspended on a chain in the moonpool, because the first diver down had come dangerously close to going over his annual TLD limits. Then they’d brought the bag up and called in the foam team, who’d proceeded to do the same routine on the bag that they’d done on the truck. This produced a white, oblong semisolid object some eight feet in length that was still capable of setting off radiation alarms.

  The Bureau had told Ari to call them when he had a body on deck. He duly made the call, but then had to explain that there was probably not going to be a proper identification, much less an autopsy. This news did not sit well with our Bureau. They’d told him to freeze the scene and await the imminent arrival of adult supervision. I took that as a clear signal to fold my tents and steal away into the desert night.

  I told Ari that I’d wait outside in my vehicle and got one of the vital area techs to escort me back out of the building. I called my guys at the beach house and brought them up to date and, once again, instructed them to be vigilant. Tony said he had one shepherd on the front porch and the other lurking in the back garage with the door open. Moira had gone to bed, but he and Pardee were planning to keep watch for a while. I reminded them that, if the G did show up in the night, they’d be after Moira and me, not them. Tony gently reminded me about the role of co-conspirators in the double-oh-jay statutes.

  “Our threat to go public with their detention operation was a holding action, at best,” I said. “You guys don’t have to babysit her or me. You want to bail, you probably should.”

  “You just want to be alone with the wild woman,” Tony said.

  “She’s as scary as the Bureau right now,” I said.

  “She’s got some interesting shit pre-positioned on her computer, and she backed it all up on Pardee’s. That girl’s a hot sketch, you know that?”

  “Remember her nickname, paisan,” I said. “Chances are, she earned it.”

  “What—me worry? Nice redheaded Catholic girl like that?”

  Now Ari was looking longingly at the flask, but then decided against it.

  “So,” I said. “Who or what put Carl Trask in the moonpool?”

  He shook his head slowly, as if he still didn’t believe it. “He pissed people off all the time, but everybody knew he was just doing his job—as he saw it. I can’t finger a single soul who’d want to kill the man.”

  I thought briefly about Billy the Kid, but then saw the improbability. “Well, we should be able to narrow down the suspect list pretty quick,” I said. “It has to be someone with access to that building and all three levels of security.”

  He looked over at me in the gloom of the parking lot. “Not if it was Trask who took his killer in there,” he said. “Then it could be anybody.”

  “But the cameras, the card readers—won’t they show who went in, and when?”

  “The FBI’s all over that as we speak,” he said. “And the short answer is—yes.”

  “Short answer?”

  “Well, you know what can be done with video-camera data, if someone knows how.”

  “C’mon, Ari—you’ve been watching too many movies. That’s harder than it looks, and it implies some detailed planning and premeditation. And I’ll warn you right now: The Bureau is going to want a sit-down with you, and it won’t be a casual conversation.”

  “Well, I am the head of technical security.”

  “And because this just about has to be an inside job. C’mon: You must have a theory about what the hell’s going on here.”

  He stared out the window for a long moment. He opened his mouth to say something, but then his cell phone chirped. He sighed and looked at the data window. Then he answered it.

  In response to a question, he said he was outside, getting some fresh air. Then he looked over at me, his eyes widening. “No way,” he said. “Where’d they get that?”

  He listened some more, then said he had no idea but that he’d be back inside in five minutes. He snapped his phone shut.

  “That was your favorite Russian,” he said. “The Bureau’s apparently turned up a tape showing you and Trask going through the moonpool security tiers. She confirmed to them that you had been up there tonight. She said they wanted to know if I knew where you were.”

  “Yes, you do,” I replied. “I’m gone.”

  Two hours later, Tony nosed our boat alongside Carl Trask’s Keeper over in the Carolina Beach marina. We’d come through the narrow defile of Snow’s Cut and down the city dock channel to the marina at idle and with our running lights off. The Keeper was tied up on one of the outboard finger piers because of her deeper draft, which kept her two piers away from most of the other live-on boats. Tony brought our boat alongside, squished some fenders, and then held her steady. I passed the shepherds up onto the Keeper’s deck, and then Moira and I followed. The marina office was dark, as were all the boats that we could see, and nobody seemed to be out and about on the nearby downtown streets. I was glad it was the off-season.

  Tony passed up our gear and then, as agreed, backed away quietly and headed back out to the Cape Fear River. I led Moira up the slanting ladder to the bridge area, and we went through the same interior door Cap’n Pete had used to see if Trask was on board. A centerline companionway led down into the main lounge. I assumed there were cabins forward and the usual amenities aft of the lounge. Moira stretched out on a deep sofa and ran her fingers through her hair. We’d left the interior lights off, but I checked our surroundings through the portholes anyway. The shepherds went around checking out the scents and then plopped themselves down in front of the couch.

  I really hadn’t wanted to bring Moira along, but even she recognize
d that if the Bureau was going to pick me up again, they’d sure as hell pick her up as well. I’d driven to Southport as fast as I could without sucking up a speeding ticket and explained what was going on to my two guys. It was Tony who’d suggested Trask’s boat as a hiding place, at least initially. Pardee had taken my Suburban over to the local Wal-Mart parking lot, parked it, and walked back to the beach house. If the FBI showed up, their story would be that Moira and I went out somewhere and they hadn’t a clue as to where we’d gone after that. That would hold up for a day, at most, but by then we’d be across the river with at least some freedom of movement. Tony and I had traded cell phones just to confuse any existing eavesdropping triangulation systems.

  I sat down in a recliner next to the couch and started to explain to Moira why I’d decided to run, at least until Ari Quartermain got to the bottom of this mysterious videotape.

  “You don’t have to convince me,” she said with a wave of her hand. “Somebody parked at least one dot-exe file on my Web computer that refuses to scrub, so I figured your Gestapo still loves me.”

  “You’ve seen that before?”

  She nodded. “Just before they came the last time,” she said. “I had all the resources of the U’s computer lab, and, short of putting the computer in a swimming pool, I still couldn’t make it go away. That’s a federal intrusion, and probably from a National Security Agency super.”

  “Can they track you physically if you go online, say, from here?”

  “Yes,” she said simply. “If it’s wireless, say, a coffee shop or bookstore, the wi-fi network is registered to a physical place or place of business. If it’s via a cell phone, they can triangulate the towers. If it’s a dial-up, it’s moving over a domestic or business telephone number, all of which have a physical address.”

  “Shit, when did all this happen?”

  She smiled. “Despite Mr. Gore’s claims, the Internet was created by the Defense Department. They never create anything to which they don’t have supervisory access. That’s not to say it can’t be spoofed, and I can make it really hard. But we’re talking about putting a laptop up against a Cray supercomputer or ten. Bad odds, over time.”

  I got up and went around to the portholes again, checking to see if anyone was coming toward or down our pier. But the marina remained asleep, so I dropped back down into the waiting arms of the recliner. Suddenly I was pretty tired and found myself trying to stifle a big yawn. That set Moira off, and then she sat up and patted the corner of the couch. I moved over as she made a pillow out of a car blanket draped across the back of the couch, lay down, and put her head in my lap.

  “I just have one question, Mr. Ex-policeman.”

  “Shoot.”

  “If everybody thinks this Trask guy was murdered, won’t they come here? To where he lived? Won’t they want to search this boat, see if anything points to a motive or something?”

  I stared down at her for a second. Of course they would. They’d rustle up a search warrant first thing in the morning and be here in force by nine or so. Shit.

  “All of you ex-cops, and you didn’t think of that?” she asked in mock disbelief.

  “Some of us ex-cops have had a long effing day,” I said grouchily, mostly because she was absolutely right. None of us had thought it through, and unless we were willing to steal this boat, we’d be seeing a herd of Buroids on deck with the morning sun. At this stage of the game, I was almost willing to just wait for them to show up. Almost.

  The cell phone in my jacket pocket vibrated. It was Pardee. Tony hadn’t returned yet, but the beach house had had night visitors. He’d changed the story: Tony was out on the town with Moira, and I was, to the best of his knowledge, still at the power plant. They’d asked to look around, and he’d told them to come back with a warrant, which they promised they would, and when they did, et cetera, et cetera.

  “But here’s the thing,” he began.

  “I know—we’ve already figured that out.”

  “Yeah—okay. Which is why I’ve turned Tony around.”

  Then I heard the tramp of footsteps out on the main pier. It sounded like they were coming our way.

  “Turn him around again, Pardee,” I said wearily. “I think we’re busted.”

  Actually, we weren’t. The footsteps turned out to be two severely inebriated yachtsmen who were trying to goose-step down the pier to their boat. I watched the two clowns make it to their gangway, where they sat down and promptly had another nip.

  Too early the next morning I took the mutts down the pier to a grassy area in front of the marina office to let them make their morning insults. I left them out on deck when I got back. Thirty minutes later, I thought I heard them walking around aft as if they were interested in something back there. I went to the portholes, but it was still misty dark outside except for the lights coming from the marina parking lot. None of the nearby boats was showing any lights, and the marina office was still dark. One of the dogs scratched pitifully on the back door, so I relented and went back to bring them in from the cold.

  When I opened the door, I discovered both shepherds totally immobilized in what looked like black nylon fishnets, and two space aliens dressed all in black pointing stubby assault rifles at my face. There seemed to be six more climbing over the boat’s transom as I stood there like a complete idiot.

  I had to admit: They were good. Really good. They’d managed to get alongside the boat without alerting the shepherds, immobilize them without a sound, and board the Keeper without either of us feeling or hearing anything. The leader of the squad motioned for me to back up into the narrow companionway between the galley and the vestibule leading down into the engine compartment. His face was entirely concealed by a tactical SWAT mask, but the muzzle of his weapon was in plain view and unwavering. Three of them squeezed by the leader with the muffled sounds of body armor, and then I heard a little squeak from Moira in the main lounge. A minute later, Moira and I were sitting on the couch, our hands in our laps bound by plastic handcuffs looped through our belts, and the room was filling up with men in black.

  They spread out, quietly but efficiently, throughout the boat, making sure there wasn’t anyone else on board. Within about a minute, the entire crew was back in the main lounge. There were none of the usual “Clear!” reports being shouted from room to room. Instead I heard a muttering sound among the group, which was when I realized they were networked on a tactical headset radio circuit. This was not your garden-variety SWAT team. They were big, and their body armor made them look huge. One of them found Moira’s cell phone. He picked it up, scanned the screen, and then extracted the battery and the SIM card. Then he crunched the plastic carcass in his gloved hand and dropped the plastic bits into a trashcan by the desk.

  One of the group handed his weapon to another man and stepped forward. He took his face mask off with a faint hiss of air. It was the Marine major from our erstwhile federal day-care center, and he did not look happy.

  “What did you do to my dogs?” I asked.

  “They’re safer in the nets than running around,” he said. “This way we don’t have to kill them. Like they killed one of my dogs.”

  “I apologize for that,” I said. “He was doing his job, but so were mine.”

  “Your ‘job’ was to sit tight. I want to know how you got loose in the first place.”

  I wasn’t going to tell him anything, but then Moira spoke up. “I got us loose, Major Fuckface,” she spat. “Your so-called electronic security was a joke.”

  “And I suppose you started that fire?”

  “Damned straight,” she said before I could deny everything. “I hope the whole goddamned place burned down.”

  “Got your wish, sweetheart,” he said. “Now we’re going to get mine. Someone wants to see you.”

  He snapped his fingers, and two of his masked brutes came forward. One hauled Moira to her feet by her cuffed wrists while the other pulled a black mesh body stocking over her head from the back in one sm
ooth motion. He stretched it down to her waist, where the first man let go of her cuffs long enough for his buddy to pull the stocking all the way down to her ankles. The fabric completely encased her body. She tried to struggle, but the first guy was holding what looked like a compact hair dryer, which was already plugged into a wall receptacle. He turned it on and blew hot air all over Moira, and, to my amazement, the loose folds of fabric shrank her into a tight black nylon mummy with only her terrified eyes and nose showing. Two more men stepped forward and picked her up by her armpits and ankles and carried her toward the back of the boat and out the back door. Another one had her computers under his arms. I caught one last glimpse of her eyes. I couldn’t tell if she was scared or really angry.

  I was too surprised to offer any opposition, and my brain was telling me to sit very still. The major laughed.

  “Surprised?” he said.

  “You came for her?”

  “You bet your interfering ass,” he said. “You have no idea who you’ve been consorting with, Lieutenant Richter, but suffice it to say, she is most definitely part of the problem and not the solution.”

  This time he knew my name, and my surprise must have shown. He pulled his face mask to his mouth and said something. The room began to clear itself of black-clad soldiers. The last one to leave leaned over and slapped a black hood over my head and cinched it down around my neck with a cord.

  “You gen-pop civilians don’t have a clue,” the major said. “You think that woman’s some sort of civil libertarian, fucking around out there on the Web, making some kind of statement.” I could feel him leaning closer, smell the chemical scent coming off the body armor.

  “There’s a war on, asshole,” he snarled. “Right now it’s being fought over there. People like her want to bring it over here. They want to see school buses blown over by IEDs. They want to see the jihadis get a nuke into Washington, or take down the national electric grid and put us all back to the eighteen-hundreds. Moira Maxwell is all too typical of the new and improved, college-overeducated, peace-now, antiwar, anti-male, anti-authority Movement, and that’s Movement with a capital M. They spell America with a k, and for reasons nobody can fathom, they hate this country and all it stands for.”