He called room service and ordered the “executive” surf and turf. While waiting, he changed into his tux, which was almost identical to those worn by the staff he’d seen carrying drink trays and pushing the linen-draped room service trolleys.
A few minutes later, at the sound of a gong, he answered his door and admitted a waiter who not only wore a tux like his, but was close to his height and weight. Their principal differences were twenty years in age, a slight hunch, and an overbite. Lucky, Charlie thought. He could mimic those.
He asked, “Sir, how would you like to make a thousand dollars?”
The man, who probably heard an equally unusual question at least once a week, didn’t hesitate. “Depends what for.”
“For reasons I’m sure I won’t need to explain to you, I need to get out of this building without being seen by my wife, who unexpectedly just showed up.”
Stooping so as to resemble the waiter and to keep his face from the view of security cameras, Charlie heaved the trolley down a service corridor, his planned change of clothes hidden in a food compartment.
He came to an exit leading onto a dark dining patio, evidently used during warmer months. Abandoning the trolley, he crossed the patio, reaching an unlit spiral stairwell that took him down to a curb lined with six or seven buses rumbling at idle. Their exhaust created a fog laced with diesel fumes. His plan had been to make his way to the parking lot and find someone leaving the casino who would thank Jesus for the crazy Yankee who gave him three grand for a clunker pickup truck. But this was better.
Charlie fell into step with the grumbling and otherwise downtrodden crowd exiting the casino and boarding the buses. Throwing the windbreaker over his tuxedo coat and zipping it to the neck, he wove through shadows and climbed aboard the first bus in line, a sixty-foot-long Golden Sun coach destined for Hattiesburg, Mississippi’s YMCA, according to the marquee.
He found a seat, the three dozen passengers scattered around the cabin paying him passing notice at most. The lone exception, a buzzard of around eighty lowering himself into the seat across the aisle. The old man locked eyes with Charlie and said, “Fun, but no money,” then readied his blanket and tubular “snuggle pillow” for the trip home.
The bus driver, a fiftyish man with the look of a commandant, took his place behind the wheel, snapped the door shut, and propelled the coach toward the highway-all without a glance at the passengers. The Golden Sun’s management cared much more about gamblers on the way in than those who’d left.
13
The Brig reminded Bream of a utility shed. Decorated, barely, with a pair of model ships, a dartboard, and three beer company posters, it smelled of low tide even though the tide was now high-because the jukebox was out of order and the six solitary patrons weren’t speaking to one another, Bream could hear the waves slapping the top of the pier.
Glad of the opportunity to be alone with his thoughts, he climbed onto a stool at the warped bar and ordered his Bud.
He found himself stealing glances at the young woman in a Princeton sweatshirt at the other end of the bar, as exquisite a specimen as he’d ever seen. Aphrodite with green eyes and a damned good attendance record at the gym.
What the hell, he wondered, was someone like her doing in a place like this?
Cliche be damned, he wandered over and asked.
“Waiting for you to come to this side of the bar.” She flashed two fingers to the bartender. “But just because you’re the only man here who wouldn’t be a shoo-in for the cast of a zombie movie, don’t think I’m going to be easy.”
“That makes two of us,” Bream said. “I’ve already got an old lady.”
“But you want a young one, don’t you?”
Bream didn’t say no. Maybe what he really needed was to take his mind off work. Settling on the stool next to hers, he asked, “So you got a story?”
At twenty-three, she said, she was over the hill as a fashion model. Tonight she was drinking herself into grudging acceptance that she would start law school in the fall. She had eschewed the Ivies for the University of Alabama so that she could help take care of her grandma, who lived nearby.
He was charmed. Three beers later and it was probably clear to everyone in the bar, even the guy facedown at the table beneath the dartboard, where this was heading.
Everyone except Bream. He was haunted by the thought that, as a consequence of the washing machine aboard his cabin cruiser, this latter-day Aphrodite would be transformed into red mist tomorrow.
He thought back to the conference in Miami in March 2005. He was a round peg then, trying to act square enough to work for Air Force Intelligence. And he was succeeding. He’d received a spate of plum assignments, the latest of which was an appointment to an interagency force to protect America from weapons of mass destruction smuggled aboard small oceangoing vessels.
The October 2000 al-Qaeda small vessel assault on the USS Cole had made it clear that waterborne attacks were high on bad guys’ to-do lists. Such an operation in the United States wouldn’t even have to be “successful” insofar as taking out a target. If it just shut down a single port, anxiety would spread through the global financial marketplace. For starters.
The director of the interagency force was a pompous Pentagon bureaucrat in desperate need, in Bream’s opinion, of a punch in the face. And that was before the ignoramus hypothesized that modern surveillance technology rendered human intelligence obsolete. His measures mollified a naive public and Congress, but utterly failed to safeguard American ports and waterways. The rest of the committee proved a bunch of bobbleheads. Or, viewed another way, proficient bureaucrats: All reaped career laurels. All except Bream, who, after one long and excruciating day of meetings in Miami, finally punched the boss in the face.
The washing machine would deliver an invaluable lesson-a costly one, but Mobile was not Manhattan. More lives had been lost in single battles in Vietnam than would be tomorrow. It didn’t hurt that Bream would nearly become a billionaire in the process. The money was of little consequence compared to the vindication, though. Imagining the expression on the Pentagon man’s face when he had to answer for what had happened, Bream worked himself into fine spirits.
“Another round?” Aphrodite offered.
“I’d love to, sugar.” He slid off his bar stool. “Thing is, I’ve got a big day tomorrow.”
14
The sun sliced through the vinyl curtains of room 12 at the Country Inn, just down the main drag from the Hattiesburg Y. The light woke the man who’d registered late last night as Miller, paying in cash. The clock radio read 9:01. Charlie, who as a boy had admired scrappy Mets infielder Keith Miller, thought the five hours of uninterrupted sleep well worth the thirty-nine dollars. Unless the CIA had used the time to locate him.
He peeled back one of the curtains, half expecting to look into the barrel of a howitzer. The day was blindingly white. Three vehicles were parked in the thirty or so spaces, a pair of big rigs and a rusted Buick Skylark that looked as if it would have a hard time cranking up, let alone following the casino bus on the interstate. On the four-lane road fronting the parking lot, a handful of cars and pickup trucks waited at a red light.
Charlie found the Country Inn lobby empty. The middle-aged Pakistani man behind the reception desk, embroiled in a phone conversation that could only be spousal, didn’t look up as Charlie exited.
The Dollar Store was a treasure trove. The shaggy blond wig Charlie selected, though probably intended for a woman, appeared fake only on close scrutiny-a man could wear it and pass for a biker. The horn-rimmed sunglasses, likely sitting on the spinning rack since the Dollar Store was the Quarter Store, might be taken as retro-chic and would certainly alter the contours of his face. He also picked out several sweatshirts and a camouflage-print coat. If Eskridge’s people were to ask young Mysti at the register what Charlie had purchased, they would net a dozen possible descriptions.
Getting into the spirit of obfuscation, Charlie bought three more w
igs, a fisherman’s hat, and a purple poncho.
“School play,” he said with affected sheepishness as he set everything onto the conveyor belt.
Behind the counter, Mysti smiled reflexively. Her gaze was fixed on the round security mirror overhead. Charlie saw the reflection of an elderly woman sliding a Christmas ornament-three for a dollar-into her blouse.
Leaving the store, Charlie started back across the street to the Avis two buildings down. He noticed security cameras on three of the car rental agency’s walls. Even with the big blond wig and sunglasses, he would thwart decent facial recognition software for only a few seconds, if that.
Farther up the block, Hattiesburg Rent-A-Car, a spruced-up shed with a hand-painted sign and three dusty Chryslers in its unpaved front lot, looked more promising.
Closer inspection revealed that it too had a security camera in a plastic dome the size of a salad bowl suspended from the ceiling.
Charlie cursed car thieves if only as an outlet for his frustration.
Then he considered joining them. He had watched his father hot-wire cars often enough. Of course, he’d also watched Darryl Strawberry hit 450-foot home runs.
Necessity won. He returned to the motel parking lot, stopping to tie his shoe between one of the big rigs and the old Buick, a two-toner with beige side panels.
The easiest way to gain access to a vehicle, his father had said, is by opening a door. People left them unlocked far too often. Charlie reached tentatively for the handle on the driver’s door of the Buick, bracing for the car’s owner to burst out of the motel.
The lobby door remained shut.
Odds were the Buick belonged to the man behind the reception desk. And odds also said a place like this didn’t pay for security cameras in the parking lot.
Gingerly, Charlie pulled up the handle. The door opened, hinges croaking. The dome light flickered on. Still no one seemed to notice.
He darted into the driver’s footwell, pulling the door shut behind him. Careful to keep his head below the window line, he smashed his wounded shoulder into the radio. It stung, but he quickly stretched out across the floor, flipped onto his back, and studied the ignition barrel.
On its underside, he found a curved rectangular panel the size of a Pop-Tart and plucked it free. Now he needed to find the two reds from among the jungle of wires inside the ignition barrel. Nervous perspiration burned his eyes.
He spotted the reds. Without much hope that it would work, he touched their ends together.
The engine sputtered to life.
Charlie would marvel later. Now his eyes darted toward the lobby door.
The usual.
15
The scant sunlight had failed to burn the heavy fog off Mobile Bay by late morning. Although sixty degrees, the day remained too blustery and generally dismal for most pool or waterfront activities. A few joggers and bicyclists used the trails through the Grand Hotel’s lush grounds. The G-20 security teams couldn’t have been more conspicuous. Many of the agents wore shiny black coats emblazoned with SECRET SERVICE and HAZMAT and COUNTERSNIPERS. The conference wouldn’t kick off until evening, but guard stations already formed a wall around the hotel’s main lodge and surrounding buildings. Still more security types swarmed the grounds.
In hope of passing for one of the joggers, Charlie donned the running suit and Nikes he’d purchased at a strip mall on the way out of Hattiesburg. As he loped away from the hotel, he heard high-pitched squeals and giggles. A hedgerow parted, revealing children on a playground, well within the blast range of the plastic explosive in the ADM he suspected was at the Mobile Bay Marina.
He continued toward the marina. To someone on the lookout for him now, any of the wigs would be a giveaway. So he had also bought a battery-powered hair clipper and, standing at the mirror of the mall’s deserted men’s room, shaved back most of his hairline. The rest he trimmed into a buzz cut. Gel slathered over his newly bald areas made it appear that years had passed since he’d had any hair there. He added wraparound sunglasses whose “fire-iridium”-the manufacturer’s term for “red”-lenses would divert attention from his features.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t much of a jogger. And propelling himself forward now proved an even greater struggle than usual due to the bullet wound in his shoulder as well as the two layers of long underwear he wore beneath his running suit, intended to make him look stocky.
A few yards shy of the marina’s side entrance, he dropped his hands onto his knees as if catching his breath. No pretense necessary. A shiny white power boat that looked like a miniature cruise ship now occupied the Campodonico slip by the end of the dock. Reclining in a canvas chair on the stern deck was a man of between thirty and forty, face buried in a magazine. He wore dark glasses, a Grand Hotel golf windbreaker, and a pair of Bermuda shorts. He had dark brown hair and a goatee. The Bermuda shorts alone-really, the bronzed, muscular legs the shorts revealed-were enough for Charlie to recognize the glasses, brown wig, and glue-on goatee for what they were. Ever the peacock: Bream should have worn long pants.
Instead of feeling the thrill of being right, Charlie was stumped. He had no idea how to stop Bream. He could alert the Secret Service, but they’d probably just throw him back in the local drunk tank, and then, worse, alert Bream. The CIA might help, but not before cables for authorizations ate up the remainder of the day. Or Eskridge might have Charlie thrown back in the drunk tank.
Charlie weighed contending with Bream himself. The pilot had probably deemed it too great a risk to entrust his cargo to anyone but himself, meaning his plan was to charm Captain Glenny, then hang out on the yacht until he made the transaction. Or possibly he was waiting for all of the G-20 leaders to arrive, at which time he would switch to a car and drive beyond the blast radius. Thirty miles on the interstate ought to do it. There he would detonate the bomb by pressing a button on a remote control, or, if he had adapted the detonator, by dialing a cell phone.
Charlie wished he had a gun. He reeled from flashbacks of the pawn shops he’d blown past. With all of his damned preparation, how had he gotten to this point without even a penknife?
He considered luring Bream away from the yacht, then somehow getting aboard himself. Once he found the washer, he could permanently disable the detonator by dialing an incorrect code three times, activating its safeguard, a capacitor that would essentially fry the system. It would take him two minutes, tops.
But how could he get Bream out of the way, even for one minute?
Charlie looked around for a fire alarm to pull, then realized that Bream would just stay by his yacht. A boat surrounded by water wasn’t a bad place to be during a fire. At best, the alarm would clear the marina, making Charlie’s approach as conspicuous as if he’d set himself on fire.
What about a pizza delivery?
Less stupid, the more Charlie thought about it. As on several of the boats docked here, a few of the Campodonico yacht’s windows were opened a crack to keep the cabin from getting stuffy. While Bream and the Domino’s guy stood in the parking lot trying to get to the bottom of the delivery error, Charlie could squeeze through a window and into the cabin. Unless the Domino’s guy brought the pie right to Bream’s yacht. Either way, Bream might notice. As would Glenny-Charlie detected movement behind the frosted glass window of the harbormaster’s office.
He was mulling a more discreet approach via the bay, capitalizing on the kayaks sitting on the beach at the hotel, when Bream stood up and locked the door to the cabin from outside.
Crouching behind a bush, Charlie watched the pilot straddle the starboard rail, thump onto the dock, and walk with purpose toward the parking lot. Possibly he was going to the little village to get lunch. Whatever he was doing, if it involved leaving the marina, he ought to be gone long enough for Charlie to gain access to the yacht. And it might be Charlie’s only chance.
16
With a silent prayer to the nameless divine entities he called upon when one of his horses took the lead in a rac
e, Charlie started jogging toward the marina. He tried to think of himself as a Grand Hotel guest, entitled to romp wherever he damned well pleased, and he hoped he projected this air. Particularly to Captain Glenny.
Bream had been gone for a couple of minutes when Charlie reached the pier. He exchanged a friendly smile with a man on a catamaran, then ran-although not too fast for a jogger-toward the Campodonicos’ yacht.
There was no sign of anyone aboard. Charlie heard only the wind and the creaks of the yacht as it rose and fell in the water. Stepping onto the stern, he ought to have been nervous, but he felt something akin to exhilaration.
A few steps along the narrow side deck and he reached one of the slightly opened cabin windows. The glass slid all the way open with a gentle pull. He fit through, barely, tumbling onto a cream-colored carpet and into a corridor lined with enough framed maritime maps for a museum.
He followed it to a spacious dining room with a table for eight. The adjacent kitchen had all of the necessary appliances found in a luxury home. Except a washing machine.
Holding his breath, he tiptoed down a spiral staircase, with solid mahogany steps, to the lower deck. A television glowed in one of the staterooms, giving him a start, but no one was there. The two other staterooms contained only tall beds and built-in cabinets.
Still no washing machine or sign of one.
At the end of the corridor was a closet. Without expecting much, Charlie pulled open its bifold door to find a surprisingly compact laundry alcove with plenty of shelves, a foldout ironing board, and, alongside a modern dryer, a cheap, boxy Perriman Pristina, still spotted with muck from the cavern.
Eureka, he thought.
He reached to pull open the top-loading lid when he heard a bolt snap above-deck.
Fear hit him like a bullwhip.
The cabin door creaked open. He heard at least two sets of footsteps.
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