by Ward Larsen
Yet for all its ponderous appearance, there seemed something strangely innocuous about the outer shell. In spite of the briefings they’d had, Jung saw no radiation labels or stenciled warnings. Were he to see such a container traveling down a road on a truck, he would presume it to hold fertilizer or some kind of industrial solvent.
More armed men emerged from the tunnel in the forklift’s dusty wake. Like the others, they were dressed in simple coveralls—a uniform of sorts, but lacking any rank or insignia. They were followed by Jung’s colonel. Everyone watched in silence as the cask was loaded. The trailer groaned beneath the container’s weight. Once it settled completely, a pair of men began securing heavy tie-down cables. The forklift disappeared up the road, where Jung assumed another trailer was waiting. There also had to be a troop carrier or bus for the visiting contingent.
The truck fired to life and began crawling up the access road. It was then, as he watched the mysterious cask disappear down a tunnel of wintering trees, and as the moon fell obscured by a passing cloud, that Jung was struck by what was missing. A number of the visiting squad, probably a half dozen, were no longer in sight. He wondered if they’d departed with his own men, whom he’d still seen no sign of since coming outside.
Once the big truck was gone, the commander of the visiting detail appeared from the tunnel. A round-faced man with severe black eyes, he pulled Jung’s colonel aside. He’d said his name was Park, and in spite of the fact that he wore civilian clothes, Jung had heard one of his own men address him as “General.” This seemed odd—every general Jung had ever seen wore their hard-earned stars like a second skin. Whatever he was, Jung saw clearly the deference his own colonel paid the man. The two locked in a private conference, Jung’s commander nodding as Park spoke. At the end he bowed tamely, which for a full colonel in the Strategic Rocket Forces was saying something.
The colonel motioned toward Jung and Kim. “Come back inside,” he ordered.
* * *
Jung quick-stepped toward the entrance, his sergeant following. He noticed a man from the visiting contingent falling in behind them. He was average in height but extremely muscular, and his close-cropped black hair had a strangely angular part across the top of his scalp. Like most of the others, he carried a compact semiautomatic across his chest. Another man, carrying a spool of wire and a crate, took up the rear.
They were all passing through the blast doors when Jung heard a distinct crackle in the distance. He saw his colonel, who was in front with General Park, glance once over his shoulder.
Jung knew what he was thinking. As army officers, they’d all been to the firing range a hundred times, and so they knew the sound of distant gunfire. It began as an extended barrage, multiple guns on full automatic shattering the calm night like so many strings of firecrackers. Next came a series of distinct single-round pops. Jung exchanged a look with Kim. His normally steady second was clearly unnerved. He found himself tallying the single shots. Seven … eight …
When the count reached sixteen, Jung found himself holding his breath. Hoping they would continue. He heard nothing but five sets of boots crunching over gravel.
Ten paces inside the bunker, General Park suddenly pushed Jung’s colonel against the curved stone wall. The big man behind them shuffled to one side and raised his weapon.
“What are you doing?” the colonel demanded in his brusque commander’s tone—the one Jung knew all too well. Raising his arm, he stepped toward Park as if preparing to dress down a slack cadet in a formation. The muscular man intervened, unleashing a burst with his weapon that struck the colonel squarely in the chest. He seemed to vibrate from the impacts, then fell face-down in the dirt, his arm raised in eternal protest.
Jung took a step back, stunned. In the final seconds of his life, he wished he had the courage of Sergeant Kim. Without hesitation, Kim rushed the gunman. He didn’t cover half the gap before he was cut down in a hail. The sounds of the shots reverberated like thunder in the tunnel.
Jung stood frozen. He looked at the round-faced general, and saw not a trace of mercy in his oil-black eyes. In his final moments, Jung thought of a son he would never see again. Of a dear wife who had been sleeping gently when he’d left home four days ago. He closed his eyes, and felt a surprising moment of tranquility.
Smoke from the machine pistol was still swirling toward the roof of the tunnel when the great blast doors were run closed. Ten minutes later, a large and carefully crafted explosion brought the complete collapse of the outer tunnel.
And with that, the darkness inside Bunker 814 was made final.
THREE
“Gone,” David Slaton repeated, staring at the empty slip where his boat and family had been two hours ago. “I can see that, but where did they go?”
The Scotsman on the cabin cruiser in the adjacent berth, a lanky ginger-haired man, was coiling a line near the stern. He stood framed by one of the most recognizable backdrops on earth—less than a mile distant, the iconic sentinel that was the Rock of Gibraltar. “I couldn’t say,” he replied. “I was below when they left. I presumed you were with your wife and lad.”
“No, I don’t know where they went.”
When he’d first seen the empty slip, Slaton’s concern was muted, recalling what the dockmaster had told them when they’d arrived. We’re busy this time of year, but I have a slip that isn’t reserved for the next four nights. If you stay longer than that I may have to move you.
Slaton walked his eyes up and down the piers, then out across a forest of masts and rigging. It was an expansive marina, but his wife and son had to be here somewhere. He pulled his burner phone from his pocket. He and Christine each carried one when they were apart, the sacrosanct rule of their irregular lifestyle. He saw no missed calls. Slaton tried her number. With each unanswered ring his unease rose a notch. After ten he killed the call. As a matter of security, they never left voice mails.
“So you were below deck when they pulled out?” he asked.
“Aye. I heard the engine, saw the cabin easing back,” the Scot attested. “I did go above a few minutes later and caught a glimpse of a mast rounding the breakwater—mind you, I can’t say it was your boat.”
“The breakwater?” Slaton repeated.
His discomfort went to full-on alarm. He squared his shoulders, set down the two canvas sea bags he was carrying. They contained his morning’s work: a flush motor for the head, expendables for the engine, a few provisions from a nearby grocery. Less conventionally, they held two fresh burner phones, still in their blister packaging, a modest brick of cash, and a gallon of black paint to be used in their monthly alteration of the boat’s name—the necessary evils of life on the run. Slaton looked seaward for the first time that day. He scanned what little he could see of the choppy bay for the forty-four-foot Antares catamaran they called home. He didn’t see its distinctive shape.
“I talked to your wife last night,” the Scot said. “She mentioned you’d been working on the reefing gear. I told her she should give it a trial before settin’ out to sea. Perhaps that’s where she’s gone.”
“No, she wouldn’t have done it without me.”
His vagabond neighbor nodded, either to say he understood or that he wasn’t going to argue the point. “Sorry I can’t be more help,” he said, disappearing into the cabin of his boat.
Slaton was sure Christine wouldn’t have gone out with Davy only to check new rigging. He wished it were so simple.
Old impulses took hold. He scanned the parking lot for unremarkable vehicles. The wharves for people who didn’t fit in. Marinas were, by definition, transient places, and so on the height of midmorning there was no shortage of either. He found himself scouring distant rooftops and windows. On their first day here, he’d noted cameras at the head of every pier, part of a security system to keep a record of comings and goings. He wondered where the control center was. Inside the nicely furnished marina office? Or perhaps at the headquarters of some security company in a faceles
s building across town? He should have already known that. Should have worked it out ahead of time. The all-too-familiar recriminations began to percolate.
He studied the slip where Sirius had been moored. Her original name was Windsom, but a regular change had proved a necessary accommodation—in the age of shared data, the names of vessels could be tracked from port to port all too easily. So their nautical home had acquired a rotating identity, much like the names they themselves used through expertly forged passports. He and Christine had chosen the name Sirius on a cold night, somewhere south of Sicily, as the two of them lay splayed on the afterdeck gazing at constellations with a superb bottle of wine. Next month they would choose something new. Perhaps Hydra or Auriga.
Next month …
He studied the immediate dock area, but it gave up nothing. He saw no scuff marks from boots, no empty equipment carts or abandoned lines. Slaton was well schooled in the art of not leaving traces. Ten years in the employ of Mossad, as an assassin no less, instilled the art of coming and going invisibly as a kind of second nature. Unfortunately, dealing with the aftermath of that existence was equally well practiced. Killing wasn’t the kind of job one walked away from easily. Targeted organizations reappeared, bent on settling scores. There were visitations from the friends and family of his victims, no allowance given for how deserving the dearly departed might have been. How many missions, long thought finished, had already risen from the dead like operational zombies?
“I don’t expect they’ll be out long.” The Scotsman was back on deck, his voice disrupting Slaton’s scattershot thoughts.
“What?”
The man pointed across the bay, toward Algeciras and the brown hills at the foot of the Iberian Peninsula. The skies above were nearly black, thick with the promise of rain and wind.
“A gust front,” said the Scot. “I’ve been watching it on my radar. She’ll sweep through fast, but it’ll be a wicked thirty minutes.”
For Slaton, a patch of rough weather barely registered. “Yeah, I’m sure they’ll be back before it hits. Tell me, how long ago did they leave?”
“I remember it being near the top of the hour.”
Slaton checked his watch, ran the math. Sirius had been gone roughly forty-five minutes. In that amount of time a sailboat could only go so far. Ten miles tops in the current wind, even with the help of the motor. Probably closer to five. He saw two immediate options. The first was a fast climb up the Rock of Gibraltar. As had been the case for millennia, it offered a commanding view of the surrounding waters. From there he could survey the sea in every direction: across the bay to Spain, south to Morocco, and on the east the boundless Mediterranean. From that high ground, with a set of binoculars, he was certain he could spot Sirius. But that was all he could do, and seeing his family wasn’t enough. His second option lay bobbing aimlessly behind the Scotsman’s boat: a twelve-foot inflatable with a good-sized outboard.
Slaton crafted the most carefree tone he could muster. One that was completely at odds with the churn in his gut. “I’ve got a favor to ask…”
* * *
Five minutes later Slaton was steering the little inflatable through the gap in the twin breakwaters. The seas met him firmly, a steadfast swell driven by the storm reaching across the bay. His first turn, south toward open water, was a precaution against the most trying scenario: if Sirius had taken that tack, she might soon be lost. Any other course would keep her in the bay, a contained search box Slaton was sure he could manage.
He pushed the runabout to nearly twenty knots, the bow launching over the crest of every wave and battering down the backside. Within minutes his street clothes were drenched in cold spray. He used a sodden shirtsleeve to wipe the brine from his eyes.
Where the bay widened to meet the sea, he turned east and kept that heading long enough to get a good look around Gibraltar’s southern tip. He saw no sign of Sirius’ intimately familiar shape. Certain he’d reached a point beyond which she could have sailed in an hour, Slaton reversed course toward the Atlantic. He went through the same drill to eliminate a westerly departure. Currents in the narrow passage ran rampant, and rising winds added to the turbulence. He saw great tankers and merchant ships, most anchored close to shore, but a few under way. A British Navy frigate plowed past indifferently, the Union Jack snapping smartly astern. Nowhere did he see the silhouette of an Antares 44 catamaran.
With comforting logic, he reasoned that Sirius had to be somewhere inside the bay—thirty square miles of sea, more or less, along with a handful of marinas and coves. It would be no small feat to search, but far less daunting than all the world’s oceans.
The storm was closing in. A shelf of clouds, as black as night, seeming to tumble over itself, rolling like the top of a breaking wave. The first raindrops were heavy, great pellets of water slapping his face. He imagined how Christine might be handling Sirius at that moment. She would have the storm jib raised, the main reefed in, and was probably making for sheltered waters—if she wasn’t there already.
He scanned back toward the marina, then the mole near the tiny airport. Might the Scot have been wrong? What if Sirius hadn’t left the harbor at all? What if she was snug in a new slip, riding out the blow. He imagined Christine at the stove preparing lunch, wondering where her husband had gotten off to. Imagined Davy sitting on the floor sorting plastic dinosaurs. He again used a sleeve to wipe the rain from his eyes—the distracting images went with it.
At the mouth of the bay Slaton decided to veer east. By concentrating on the shores closer to Gibraltar, he would keep the storm at bay a bit longer. He was almost abeam the great rock itself when a shape appeared on the northern horizon. It came like an apparition, a hazy silhouette materializing out of the heaviest downpour. Slaton first saw no more than a sleek hull and mast. Then the cabin gained definition, and finally the appendages. Antennas, solar panels, dodgers—the kind of intimate seafaring details that set any two boats apart.
There was no doubt—he was looking at Sirius.
Slaton pushed the outboard’s steering arm to the right and twisted the throttle wide open.
FOUR
From a mile away Slaton knew something was wrong.
The first thing he noticed was that their dinghy, which should have been tethered to Sirius’ stern, was nowhere in sight. The sails remained stowed, yet one blue cover had come loose and was flapping in the wind—a sloppy display of seamanship Christine would never have tolerated. He saw no anchor line, and the engine exhaust appeared quiet. The boat was simply adrift, forsaken to the coming squall. None of those details alone were damning, but together they reinforced the most glaring inconsistency—there was no sign of Christine or Davy on deck.
Slaton reckoned the nearest shore to be half a mile distant. There were no other boats nearby. The city carried on without remark, lost in its self-centered turmoil and oblivious to a lone catamaran bobbing offshore. When he was a hundred yards from Sirius, Slaton had to make a decision. If he throttled back now it would provide a stealthier approach. Yet it would also take two minutes longer. It was the easiest choice he’d faced all day.
He kept the little inflatable running at full speed, and reached Sirius’ stern in a shower of whitewater and noise. He killed the engine at the last instant, letting momentum carry the last few yards. In those interminable seconds, as he edged closer, impatience took hold. Slaton moved to the bow, alert and ready, straining to see inside the cabin. He saw no movement. With the motor silenced, the white noise of rain on the sea predominated. Whatever resonance might have been added by the distant city was driven away by the gathering wind.
The dinghy was coasting toward the swim platform on Sirius’ stern. From there, an integral set of steps led up to the main deck. Slaton was picking up the bow painter, taking in every nuance before him, when it struck him that he ought to be armed. He saw two immediate possibilities: a wooden paddle and a small mushroom anchor. He chose the anchor. It was not much larger than his fist, but the dens
e mass was undeniably comforting.
The inflatable’s bow nudged the platform and Slaton leapt aboard. He wrapped the painter once around a cleat, his senses reaching for any sight or sound. A gust of wind rushed through the rigging, stays and shrouds humming like the strings of a cello. He would later critique his next moves, realizing he should have been more cautious. In that moment, however, and in a behavior that was entirely uncharacteristic, Slaton let emotion overcome reason.
He rushed headlong over the aft deck, past the helm, and burst into the main cabin. He saw no sign of his family. Hope fading, he checked each of the three staterooms, every closet and compartment. Each step came quicker, each breath more shallow. He called out their names, more in torment than hope. Only the pelting rain answered, drumming over fiberglass and canvas in an unrelenting din.
With a mounting sense of dread, he pulled out his burner phone and tried Christine’s number again. Still no answer. It occurred to him that he didn’t hear her phone ringing in their stateroom. He rushed to the bedside drawer, where she usually kept it, and confirmed it was gone. In that awful moment, he couldn’t decide if a missing phone was good or bad. He saw an unmade bed, a toothbrush on the sink. Everything around him became noise, an avalanche of information that somehow crushed any logical process. After a brief hesitation, he checked the opposing nightstand—his side of the bed—where the only weapon they kept on board, a 9mm Beretta, should have been. That too was gone.
Slaton staggered back to the main cabin. In the center he stopped cold and spun a full circle.
He grasped for some reasonable scenario to fit what he saw, if only to suppress the building madness. Was it possible someone had tried to steal Sirius while Christine and Davy were ashore, then abandoned their plan? He looked around and saw a laptop computer, a high-end sat-phone, a rack of valuable nav gear. Not plausible. Could Christine have motored into the bay for some reason, then returned to shore using the dinghy after Sirius had somehow fallen disabled? It hardly made sense. It was a sailboat after all, and his wife was a seasoned captain. Just to be sure he went to the helm and cranked the engine. It fired right to life. He gave the wheel a half turn. The rudder felt free, nothing jammed or frozen.