It took Mason a moment to get there. “You mean the guy I’ve been chasing is dead?”
“That may be the case,” Kate said, not without sympathy, and watched as Mason slumped back against the chair.
After a moment he said, “My last duty assignment was Anchorage. I’m back here now solely to track down these specific arms, it was thought because I would be able to exploit any local contacts as necessary.” He looked at Kate and his smile was rueful. “My boss is going to want a lot more information about this person of interest, dead or alive.”
“Just because he’s dead, doesn’t mean the operation isn’t ongoing,” Kate said.
Mason’s eyes narrowed. “Those weapons in the hold of the Kosygin?”
“Were shipped well after his death,” Kate said. She remembered Shorty’s remark at the airport. You better hope the boss doesn’t hear about it.
Mason was quick. “So there is an ongoing operation?”
“Yes,” Kate said. She hesitated. “A small operation with, I believe, the intention of becoming a larger one. Although…” She shook her head.
“Although what?”
She met his eyes. “Although I don’t know how they thought they could get away with it.”
“The buyers were paying a lot for these weapons, Ms. Saracoff. It has been my observation that a lot of money has a way of clouding good judgment.”
Kate nodded. It had been her observation as well.
“Now, Ms. Saracoff, pay up,” Mason said. “Who are you working for?”
Client confidentiality was an inviolable tenet of the private investigator’s creed. “The State of Alaska,” she said. “Sort of.”
His eyes narrowed. His bullshit detector must be pretty good, too. “Who at the State of Alaska?”
“Sergeant Liam Campbell,” she said. “He’s an—”
“Alaska state trooper,” Mason said, “yes, I know, we’ve met.”
All Kate could think of to say was, “You have?”
“Yes.” His deferential, deprecatory ahs had disappeared, she noticed. “Is he still posted to Newenham?”
“Yes.”
“Still with the pilot?”
“Wyanet Chouinard? Yes. She’s why he hired me.” If Campbell was pissed off at her for telling the truth, then he was pissed off at her. The hunt was on, her blood was up, and the case was breaking. Besides, finding out what had been really going on at Eagle Air would almost certainly reveal the motive for Finn Grant’s murder, which was what he’d hired her for in the first place. She outlined her investigation for Mason, omitting any self-incriminating details.
He listened without interrupting, his mouth a compressed line. The Coasties listened, too, even more quietly, as if they were afraid that if they made a noise, Mason would remember they were there and send them from the room and they wouldn’t get to hear the end of the story. Mutt chewed on her bone.
“So I was with them when they delivered the totes to the ship. I ditched Boyd in a bar and came back, and the rest you know.”
A slight smile relieved the agent’s grim expression. “Tell me, Ms. Saracoff, just what would you have done if we hadn’t, ah, ridden to your rescue?”
“Called in the marines,” Kate said. She nodded at the captain and the exec. “Or in this case, the Coasties. I had my cell. I saw the cutter at the dock.” She shifted a little in her chair. “There’s something else you should know.”
“I can hardly wait,” the exec muttered.
“My name isn’t Saracoff, it’s Shugak,” she said. “Kate Shugak. There is, or there used to be, an FBI agent in Anchorage by the name of Gamble. He’ll vouch for me.”
I hope, she thought.
Twenty-seven
JANUARY 22
Adak
They fed her and let her sleep in a vacant bunk—Mutt was allowed to spend the night in the captain’s cabin, which Kate considered most unfair—and the next morning her identity and character had evidently been vouchsafed by someone because they let her have her cell phone back, which the XO had very kindly charged overnight. She gave him one of her very best smiles and he tripped over the door sill on the way out of the captain’s cabin. Always nice to know you’ve still got it.
She called Jim first to let him know she was out of the container but in custody. She hung up on him when he started laughing.
Campbell she reached at home.
“Where the hell are you?” he said. “Bill was worried when you didn’t show up for work yesterday.”
“I’m in Adak.” There might have been a slight element of sadistic glee in her voice when she added, “Oh, and I’m also in the custody of the U.S. Coast Guard. You know, just FYI.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, “I could have sworn you said you were in Adak.”
“I did.”
“And that you’re in the custody of the Coast Guard.”
“Them, too.”
“The United States Coast Guard?” he said. “Wait, ‘them, too’? May one ask who else you’re in the custody of?”
“Is that even a sentence?” she said. “The FBI.”
“The FBI?”
“Yes.”
“The Federal Bureau of Investigation?”
“You know, this is fun and I’d love to keep playing, but I called because the Coasties found a pallet loaded with M4 carbines, along with, the weapons officer on Munro tells us, enough accessory kits to turn all of them into grenade launchers. The same weapons, not coincidentally, that I saw in the back of a Cargomaster that landed at Eagle Air yesterday afternoon, which I then hitched a ride on to Adak and saw said weapons delivered to a Russian fishing trawler. Which was where they were seized, along with the crew and the ship. And, you know, me.”
A pregnant silence. “This seemed like such a nice, quiet little town when I was first posted here.”
“The FBI agent is named James Mason. He says he knows you.”
There was another brief silence. “Okay, yeah, a while ago, on another case, I met an agent named Mason.”
“That’s him. Meantime,” Kate said, “I need a favor.”
“What?”
“I need you to rustle me up a ride, or I won’t get back to Newenham until Tuesday.”
“Are you kidding me?” he said.
“Plus, if things go well, I’ll need room for four.”
“Four? Four passengers? This is nuts, and besides, even I know Wy doesn’t have anything with the kind of range to—oh.”
“What?”
“I got an idea,” Campbell said. “You going to be on your cell?”
“Yeah, but it’ll be off for the next hour or so.”
“Why?”
Unseen by Campbell, Kate smiled. “Because the FBI’s doing a bust, and I’m going along for the ride.”
She ended the call, turned off the phone, and said to Mason, “Let’s go.”
* * *
In the end it was almost too easy. The captain whistled up a vehicle from the Coastie agent shoreside and they drove to the Aleutian Sports Bar and Grill. Kate went inside. It was too early for a crowd but not too early for Jean to be on duty. “Hey,” she said.
Jean looked up from behind the bar. “Hey, yourself.”
“You ever go home, or do they keep a little rollaway bed behind the bar just for you?”
Jean smiled. It did nice things to her face. “I see you made it out alive.”
“Thanks to you,” Kate said. “Anybody come looking for me?”
“Your ex-boyfriend was asking around.”
“Wasn’t with him long enough for him to be an ex,” Kate said. “Was he mad?”
“Seemed more philosophical about it. Got the feeling it wasn’t the first time he’d had ye old bathroom trick pulled on him.” She opened the dishwasher and said, “And he didn’t leave alone after all, either.”
Kate laughed. “Sounds like what little I know about him. I need another favor, Jean.”
Jean paused in the act of racking dirty mugs an
d glasses. “Do you.”
Kate nodded. “I do. I’m looking for some people, only I don’t know my way around town. Any chance you could knock off for an hour, give me directions?”
Jean gave her a long look. “What’s in it for me?”
“What do you want?” Kate said.
Jean gave a short laugh. “I want to get the hell off this rock, but I don’t suppose that’s something you can do.”
“Well, I don’t know,” Kate said slowly.
* * *
The old officers’ quarters for the Adak Naval Air Station was a pleasant row of split-level homes on tiny lots that might once have been well kept. It was obvious now that anyone who loved them enough to maintain them was long gone. Shingles were missing, shutters sagged, windows were broken out, the street was littered with debris from the last big blow, another one of which was always on its way in the Aleutians.
Mason, Kate, and Mutt left Jean in the car, parked around the corner. There was no sign of movement from inside the house. Before they split up to take the back and front doors, Mason drew his weapon. “I don’t think that’s necessary,” Kate said. “I spent the whole afternoon with him yesterday. I don’t think he’s armed.”
Mason looked from Kate to Mutt and back again. “And you aren’t?”
Kate shook her head and went around to the back, where she found a door into the kitchen, unlocked. There was something about the entire southwest of Alaska that did not love a lock. She eased the door open and stepped inside, listening. The door closed as silently as it had opened, which given the neighborhood’s general air of dissipation, surprised her. She slipped through the room, Mutt padding behind, and peeked around the corner, to see Mason coming in the front door. She pointed at the olive drab duffel bag sitting next to it, Boyd’s name stenciled in bold black Marks-A-Lot on the side. He raised his eyebrows and she nodded.
The ground floor held kitchen, living room, dining area, and a half bath. Kate pointed at the stairs, and Mason nodded. They went noiselessly up the stairs and down the hall, checking one room after another. One empty bedroom, another, a bathroom.
At the end of the hall at the back of the house, Kate found Boyd asleep in the master bedroom, sprawled facedown on a king-size bed, snoring, a deep, larynx-rattling, window-chattering glottal roar. The woman on her back next to him was snoring louder than he was.
Kate stepped into the hall to signal to Mason and went back in the bedroom, putting herself on the same side of the bed as Boyd. She waited until Mason was on the woman’s side.
He raised his eyebrows. She nodded. He grabbed the woman’s hands and hauled her over on her side, away from Boyd.
“Wha—?” she just had time to say, before Kate said in a voice pitched to be heard back in Newenham, “Boyd, you faithless bastard. And here I thought it was true love between us.”
Mutt, her tongue lolling out of an anticipatory lupine grin, punctuated Kate’s statement with a very loud “Woof!”
His companion screamed. Boyd jerked awake with a snort.
Kate had either forgotten that Boyd was ex-military or had discounted it on the evidence of the paunch and the slightly dissipated air. Boyd levitated from the bed and came all upstanding in a single movement, landing on his feet with his knees flexed and his arms and hands curved and ready for attack. He grabbed the front of Kate’s jacket and pulled.
Everything seemed to slow down, and someone seemed to have hit the mute button. Mason had his hands full with the woman, who was shrieking hysterically—Kate could tell because she had her mouth open—and fighting him tooth and claw. The blood from a long red scratch drooled down his cheek.
In her mind’s eye, Kate had a distinct picture of Boyd getting his shoulder into her diaphragm, knocking the air out of her the same way it had been before she went into the Dumpster behind Bill’s. She saw Boyd straightening his legs and back and the momentum launching her into the air. She saw herself hit the wall in a full-on body splat. She saw her unconscious body slide down to the floor, out for the count.
Only none of that happened. She was never able to fully account for it afterwards. It might have been that after having been tossed first into a chest freezer and then a Dumpster and after that locked inside a freight container, she was simply spoiling for a fight. It might have been that Moses Alakuyak, that archetypal little archfiend, was a better teacher than she had given him credit for. Whatever the reason, she felt her arms come up in horse stance position and she stepped into Boyd instead of away, as every instinct screamed that she should. She grabbed chest hair in both fists—he had a lot of it—and stepped back, keeping her arms in position and not coincidentally yanking on his chest hair.
His chest hair straightened and his skin tented over his chest. His eyes widened and his mouth opened. He must be shrieking, too. More to the point, his grip on her jacket loosened. She didn’t let go, though, she kept pulling him forward until he was fully off balance and ready to fall on her. Pull Back. Press Forward.
At the last possible moment she stepped forward with her left foot, anchoring it behind his right one, and advanced another step with her right foot, bringing her center of gravity over her feet and past them and all the weight of her body with it. Push.
Boyd was rocked completely off balance. His arms flung wide and windmilled and he fell backwards, landing hard on the floor. It knocked the breath out of him and he gaped and gulped like a fish out of water.
Kate was intimately acquainted with the feeling. Real time returned in a rush, and she leaned down and tapped his diaphragm. The first thing she heard when her eardrums started working again was the Whoosh! of air returning to his lungs, a sound that reminded her all too painfully of her recent encounter with the Dumpster in back of Bill’s.
She wished the demon ninja had been there to see.
The next sound she heard was the woman, sobbing, and Kate looked across the bed to see that Mason had finally gotten the cuffs on her and was dabbing at the scratch on his cheek with a handkerchief. “We can only hope she isn’t rabid,” he said with distaste.
Mutt had her jaw open and her tongue lolling out in a boisterous canine laugh.
* * *
Jean knew where Shorty lived, too. He wasn’t near as much fun.
Twenty-eight
JANUARY 22
Adak
They stopped by Jean’s place so she could stuff her belongings into a daypack and a plastic grocery bag. There was no sign of whoever had left the bruises on Jean’s arms, a good thing, because Kate was in no mood. They returned to Munro to grab some lunch, laid on for them in the captain’s cabin.
“The crew of the trawler?” Mason said.
“All members secured and under guard,” the captain said. His curiosity warred with his professionalism. His professionalism won, and he let them wolf their lunch in peace.
Campbell called as Kate was wedging the last bite of an excellent sliced beef sandwich into her mouth. “Be at the Adak airport in half an hour.” He hung up before she could swallow and ask who was picking them up.
Hard to believe now that she had ever regarded cell phones with anything like misgiving. She passed the news to Mason, who looked at her with increasing respect. “You do get things done, Ms. Shugak.”
“Call me Kate,” she said. “I’m always on a first-name basis with my co-brawlers after I’ve been in a fight with them.” She smiled at the captain. “It’s a little rule I have.”
The captain’s eyes went to the scratch on Mason’s cheek. The struggle to ask was almost visible. Again, admirably, Kate thought, professionalism won and he refrained.
“The trawler?” Mason said as they rose to their feet.
“Impounded,” the captain said. “Engineering is running a quick-and-dirty check to see how seaworthy it is, after which I’ll have a prize crew deliver it to Kodiak, along with its crew. Kodiak’s expecting them, and will wait to hear what you want done with them.”
“Send them to Anchorage, probably,”
Mason said, thinking out loud, “although they’re bound to be little fish.”
“The ship’s ours,” the captain said, glad to find some means to exercise his authority. “We seized it.”
Mason waved an airy hand. “Nothing to do with me. Let’s let that battle be fought on land, by the lawyers for our respective services.” His smile had a soothing effect, and Kate bet he knew it.
The captain exerted executive privilege to drive them to the airport, mostly, Kate thought, because he was hoping to hear a little more of the story. In that he was disappointed, but when the Gulfstream landed and Gabe McGuire got out, he was well repaid if the dumbstruck expression on his face was any indication. At any rate, he stalled out the car twice before he drove away.
Kate herself was not best pleased on any number of fronts. “You’re my ride?”
McGuire grinned down at her from his rarefied Olympian heights. A ray of sun found a way through the gathering clouds to gild his hair, darken his eyes from chocolate to espresso, and make his teeth that much whiter against his—probably sun bed—tan. “I am.”
Boyd and Shorty gaped at him. Jean turned beet red and looked like she’d swallowed her tongue. Mason was made of sterner stuff. “Special Agent Mason, Mr. McGuire. The FBI appreciates the assistance. If you’ll give me a receipt, we can at least make a stab at getting you reimbursed for fuel.”
“I appreciate the offer,” McGuire said. “Av gas isn’t cheap.” He looked at Kate. “You ready?”
Kate had never been on a private jet before and it was difficult to remain unimpressed. The interior surprised her by its lack of ostentation. There were about a dozen overstuffed chairs and one plush couch and a lavatory that looked like any other bathroom on a plane. The windows were a little bigger than she was used to, the cabin a lot smaller, and there were no middle seats. Nothing looked new. “Where’s the wet bar?” she said.
“Left it in L.A., along with the pole dancers,” McGuire said, closing the hatch. “Lester?”
Up front, Lester leaned out of the left seat and looked down the aisle.
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