Jade unclenched her fists and laid her hands in her lap, then swiveled around again to face the window. “After they grabbed me out there, one of them mentioned the name of an old enemy of mine. This is an extremely violent and dangerous man, and he hates me as much as any human being can hate another. I must know where he is, and what his involvement is in this thing. Most important, I must determine if he knows where I am, because this is an enemy who would dearly love to kill me, and it wouldn’t surprise me if he also targeted my children.”
“What’s his name?”
“Don’t ask questions, Roy. If you want to help me, just do as I ask.”
“Look, Jade, I think I’m beginning to get the hang of this game. You were a Navy spy. You’re in possession of certain classified information, and if you tell secrets, even to defend yourself against enemies who are trying to kill you, the Navy will come down hard on you. You’re also afraid that if I get caught helping you and it appears that you’ve shared any of your secrets with me, the Navy will want to fry my ass along with yours. I understand the rules, okay? Now, tell me the name of this man you want to find. I’ll do what I can to check him out. I’ll use unofficial sources. I’ll never breathe a word about where I got the name, or why I’m asking about him. You can trust me.”
“I know that, Roy. At the moment it’s not the Navy that concerns me. If you’re caught trying to trace this man, certain other people will know where you got the name. I don’t want to put you in a position where you could get killed.”
Now Roy felt blood rush to his face as anger surged in him. He abruptly leaned forward in his chair, said, “Don’t you patronize me, lady! I’m a cop—something you seem to remember only when it suits you in this little private game you want to keep playing. If you want to be stupid and not give me this man’s name to check out, then go ahead and be stupid. Just don’t patronize me with this shit about not wanting to put me in danger. You worry about you and your children, and I’ll worry about myself. I want to nail those bastards as much as you do, and you’re certainly not my Goddamn mother. Got it?”
Jade’s head didn’t move, but her eyes darted in Roy’s direction. After a few moments she said evenly, “His name’s Henry Bolo. Up until a couple of years ago he was an Army Master Sergeant, but he’ll be retired now, on a disability pension. You might want to check with VA hospitals as well as police records. He’s definitely the criminal type, a psychopath, and I don’t see him lasting long in civilian life before ending up in jail somewhere.”
“That’s better,” Roy said curtly as he quickly wrote down the information on a pad.
“Thanks for running a check, Roy. I very much appreciate the ways you’ve already helped me. I won’t tell you again to be careful because you already know to do that. I’m sorry if you thought I was being patronizing before. I didn’t mean to be.”
“Did you disable this guy? Is that why he’s so hot to kill you?”
“Tracking down Henry Bolo isn’t enough, Roy. There are other things I have to know. I still need to be able to work on one of those men, and I’ve told you which one will be easiest to break.”
Roy slowly shook his head. “You are some piece of work, Jade,” he said quietly. “You know what I think? I think you shared all that personal stuff so you could try to manipulate me, soften me up so that I’d let you torture a prisoner in my own Goddamn jail house. That’s not going to happen. I can’t let you do it.”
Jade slowly stood up, and then leaned forward on the desk until her face was only inches from Roy’s. Her voice, although low, vibrated with tension, and her green eyes blazed with cold fury. “What the hell’s the matter with you? We’re talking about the lives of my children. Do you think the Cairn police, or the F.B.I., or you are going to protect my son and daughter from Henry Bolo if he decides to come after them to punish me? You think I’m playing some kind of game? You ask yourself if you’d be willing to torture a kidnapper to save the life of a child who’d been buried underground and was running out of air. Well, my children and I will be running out of air as long as Henry Bolo is alive and on the loose.”
Roy stared back into the smoldering eyes, said evenly, “Now who’s playing Lone Ranger? Who’s been playing Lone Ranger all along? Well, I’m not Tonto, and I’m not convinced the men won’t begin to talk once they’ve been transferred to the County Jail and have to deal with the District Attorney. They’re each facing a long prison sentence, and just a little more cooperation from you might help us break this whole thing wide open. If and when they do start talking, I won’t have it even rumored that I aided and abetted the torture of a prisoner. That might even get them off. I’ve dealt with some pretty cold-blooded characters, but you’ve got anti-freeze in your veins. You don’t think I understand your situation by now? You’re a single mother fighting to save her own life as well as those of her children from a bunch of heavily armed and savage professional killers. All the while you keep what must be a whole load of very dangerous secrets that you can’t, or won’t, share with anybody. You’re all alone, Jade, but the fact of the matter is that you go out of your way to keep yourself isolated.”
Roy waited for Jade to reply, but she remained silent, leaning forward on the desk and staring into his eyes, as if waiting for him to change his mind. Finally he continued, “There isn’t a man I know who wouldn’t already be seriously bent, if not broken, from the pressure you’re under. I don’t know anybody who could have gone through what you did today, then sit and stare calmly out a window while trying to figure out how to manipulate a police detective into letting you torture a man in his custody.
“What makes what you’re trying to do all the more remarkable is the fact that you don’t enjoy hurting people. I know that. I’ve known torturers, both cops and soldiers, and you’re not one of them. I know what torturing that man would cost you. You do what you think you have to do, without hesitation. I guess that comes from your training, and you’ve been trained well. You’re up to your pretty ass in alligators, and you don’t scream, or break things, or get drunk, or cry. You’re not even breathing hard. You fascinate me, Jade, but you’re also beginning to scare the shit out of me. Maybe the Navy did a lot more to you than just make you a dangerous person. Maybe they cut out your heart, because right now you’re acting more like a robot than a person. So let me ask, what the hell’s the matter with you?”
Jade’s reaction startled him. He watched Jade very slowly straighten up and take a step backward. The cold rage in her eyes had suddenly blinked out, replaced by muddy shadows he instantly recognized as fear. Then her face fell apart; her lips began to tremble and her mouth tightened into a grimace as tears sprang to her eyes and rolled down her cheeks.
“Damn you, Roy,” Jade sobbed. “Damn you for trying to make me weak.”
Then she covered her face with her hands and hurried out of the office.
Chapter Seven
i
Jade cried herself out in the privacy of her car in a small park down by the river. Finally dry-eyed and composed, she started up her Jeep, drove out of the park and then south toward the Nanuet Mall and its electronics and hardware stores where she knew she could get what she needed.
She felt much better, and she wondered if Roy Mannes had any idea of the enormity of the gift he had given her in summoning forth her tears. Most likely, she thought, he hadn’t a clue, and he’d said what he had out of pride and anger, but that didn’t make her any less grateful for what he’d done. Before he’d verbally torn into her she’d had no idea of how very close she was to blowing apart under the suffocating, paralyzing tension of the situation she found herself in. Considering how she felt now, it seemed all she’d needed was a good cry, and the detective had certainly delivered.
Before she’d returned from the cellblock and made her request she had sensed that the detective not only found her sexually attractive but also liked and respected her. She was not certain what he thought of her now, but it didn’t really matter. She had nee
ded an ally, and Roy had proven himself to be one. He had roughly shouldered his way into her delicate and dangerous situation and secrets, and that had been the only way she could have accepted his help. She considered the detective to be a truly tough man, not a macho poseur, and that was important considering the people he proposed to challenge and unmask. Most important, she trusted him. Despite all that had happened, she felt immeasurably better than at any time since she had first seen the carcass of the Jolly Roger in Jack Trex’s nets and sensed in her gut that the safe world she had so carefully built for her and her children to live in was about to collapse around her.
At the shopping mall she picked up the equipment she needed, and then returned home and worked past midnight designing and laying down a sensory security grid around the perimeter of her home. Then she had a sandwich and glass of warm milk before taking a hot shower and going to bed.
She experienced healing dreams of Max, as she usually did every night, but on this night Roy Mannes shared her dream-time with her dead husband, and Jade was somewhat surprised to find that this did not disturb her. The detective’s presence in her dreams was not disturbing in any way, and she realized that if Max were alive he and the gruff policeman would most likely be close friends.
In her dream both Max and Roy suddenly turned and looked toward the horizon. Something was approaching from the distance.
Thwop-thwop-thwop
Danger.
Thwop-thwop-thwop.
Max and Roy turned and began shouting at her. Although she could not hear their voices over the approaching sound, she knew they were shouting a warning.
Thwop-thwop-thwop.
It was not a dream.
Jade abruptly awakened to the sound of what she recognized as a large, heavy helicopter passing almost directly overhead, very close to the tops of the trees along the shoreline. The luminous dial on her clock-radio read 2:45. Her first reaction was to dismiss the helicopter as being from West Point, a few miles to the north, roll over and go back to sleep.
Except that she had never known West Point to conduct low-altitude, night training flights; and even if this were a training flight, the pilot would not be permitted to fly so close to the ground over a heavily populated area.
Jade quickly sat up, turned on the light on her nightstand, picked up the telephone there and quickly dialed the number of the Cairn police station. When the night dispatcher answered, she shouted into the phone, “Get out of there! There’s no time to explain! You’re under attack! Get everybody out of there now!”
ii
She’d heard no explosion, which meant that perhaps she’d been wrong and overreacted. She felt an immense sense of relief as she drove toward the Cairn police station, but when she reached the center of town and turned toward the river and the stone building at its edge she realized she had not been wrong; there were bands of yellow tape cordoning off the station house, and the street was clogged with police cars from both Cairn and Orangetown, their flashing red, yellow and white strobe lights lending the scene an odd carnival aura. She parked her Jeep up on the sidewalk two blocks away, then headed down toward the building. Two state trooper cruisers, sirens wailing, flashed past her as she walked.
She stopped before the police tape strung across the stone steps leading up to the entrance to the building, waited and watched as police and state troopers hurried in and out. Ten minutes later Roy, dressed in jeans, sneakers, and his familiar blue windbreaker, came out the door. He saw Jade, walked down the steps and over to where she was standing. “Want to come in?” he asked quietly as he lifted the yellow tape.
Jade shook her head. “Too many ears. I’d rather take a walk. Can you get away?”
Roy grunted, and then ducked under the tape. They walked together down a wooden ramp behind the station house to a thin strip of sand beside the moon-washed river.
Jade asked, “Anybody hurt?”
“No. The call was from you, wasn’t it? How did you know what was coming down?”
“I heard the helicopter go overhead, and I was pretty certain it wasn’t from West Point. I realized what that could mean, and I wanted to warn any cops inside the building to get out. If the men in the bird were who I thought they were, I was afraid they might come in shooting, or even start blowing things up.”
“Barney and Cynthia were on desk and dispatch duty. They say everything happened unbelievably fast. They heard something land on the roof, and the next thing they knew there were three men wearing ski masks and carrying automatic weapons inside. They threw a smoke grenade, and one of them burned out the lock on our guests’ cell door with some kind of charge. Then away they all went. Cynthia says she thinks it all happened in less than ninety seconds, maybe two minutes at most. They were damn good, and they knew exactly where to find their buddies. The boys who attacked you must have had spotters in a plane or over on the shore in Westchester.”
Jade nodded. “It was a classic military extraction, perfectly executed. The men who attacked knew a team would be coming for them, which is why they didn’t say anything or seem too worried about their situation.”
“You still don’t think these were military people?”
“Oh, they’re military people, all right—but they’re not in active service, or they’re rogues. I don’t believe any of the services are involved in this, at least not at a command level. But I could be wrong.”
“I think you are wrong. Where would retired military personnel, or any other civilians, get a helicopter that size with night-flying capabilities?”
“Good question. They’d need to have some heavy duty backers with deep pockets and the right connections.” Jade paused, looking out over the silver ribbon of light the moon had painted on the river all the way across to the Westchester shore. After a few moments she looked back at Roy and continued, “I’m going to give you some information that might prove helpful, but that you can’t use directly or discuss with anyone else.”
“I told you I’m getting the hang of this game.”
“You’ve already guessed correctly on a number of things, but what I’m going to tell you might narrow the focus of your investigation and lead you in a couple of new directions.”
“I’m listening.”
“You recognized the device on the back of the thing Jack netted as a magnetic mine. The carcass was that of either a seal or a sea lion, but judging by its size I’d guess the latter. The Navy would call it a Jolly Roger, which was the code name for a secret project to train large sea mammals to carry explosives to blow up ships in heavily guarded enemy harbors. The project was deemed impractical, unreliable, and too risky. It was cancelled years ago.”
“The carcass on Jack’s boat wasn’t exactly fresh, but it wasn’t years old either.”
“No.”
“Then the Navy’s still at it.”
“Somebody’s still at it.”
“Come on, Jade. You don’t buy that Navy, Coast Guard and F.B.I. shit about terrorists, do you?”
“Not in the sense that they mean it, which is foreign-born, but I’d certainly describe the men who blew up Jack’s boat and tried to kill me as terrorists. How would you describe them? Are Arabs the only people you can think of to label terrorists?”
“We’ve done that dance. These guys are definitely Americans.”
“My point is that when most Americans hear the word ‘terrorist’ they think Arab, or other foreign-born. That’s why the word was used. The Navy may not have any direct involvement, but they’re obfuscating, right along with the Coast Guard and F.B.I. That pisses me off.”
“I hear you. Now, why would these terrorists release this Jolly Roger item in the Hudson River?”
“I don’t believe they did. I think it was released in the Long Island Sound as part of a test or training exercise. The animal was sick, and it had lost its navigational abilities. It couldn’t find its way back to the mother ship. It wandered through New York Harbor, swam up the Hudson and died.”
; “If a sick animal with a magnetic mine strapped to its back meandered through New York Harbor with all its shipping traffic, then the mine must have been a dummy.”
“Check.”
“And Jack’s boat was deliberately blown up.”
“You already knew that.”
“But you wouldn’t confirm. What you know, the Navy knows.”
“Check.”
“So we come full circle. If the Navy isn’t responsible, why should they obfuscate, as you put it?”
“Unclear. But I have my suspicions.”
“Care to share them with me?”
“I think we’re on our way there.”
“What could something that big, and aquatic, have been released from, if not a Navy ship?”
“A large yacht specially outfitted with a holding tank would do.”
“But a submarine operating out of Groton would do even better, wouldn’t it?”
“I don’t see how officers could load something like a Jolly Roger on board and cart it around without a lot of people taking notice. There’s just too much paperwork and too many checklists crossing too many desks. Why would Navy officers risk their careers to illegally test an obsolete weapons system the Navy doesn’t want anyway?”
“The answer is easy. It was an official Navy operation.”
“I’ve told you: The Navy doesn’t send out teams of over-the-hill thugs to assassinate civilians. The Jolly Roger, the sabotage of Jack’s boat and the assassination attempt are all part of the same package.”
“Why would anyone want to resurrect an obsolete weapons system in the first place?”
“A living torpedo is only obsolete if you have other weapons, like laser-guided missiles, that are so much more dependable. Maybe some Gulf sheik or other third-world crazy wants a few to keep in his swimming pool to impress his guests. Or the Jolly Roger could have been special-ordered by some other terrorist organization looking to blow up, say, a passenger liner in the middle of the ocean without leaving fingerprints.”
The Keeper Page 11