by Andy Straka
“Whoever’s driving this thing must be a kamikaze pilot.”
“Not necessarily. They still want their money. They’ve probably got a raft with an outboard tied off the back or something.”
“Yeah … wait a sec. Give me that thing.”
He took the M-16 from me and aimed it at the bridge. He fired three precise shots, spreading them evenly across the glass of the bridge, shattering the windshield. The boat kept moving.
The sound of an outboard engine roared to life from out beyond the rear of the vessel.
“Looks like Goyne and whoever else was left just bugged out,” he said. “Did you hit him?”
“I think so. Doesn’t matter now anyway.”
I looked up to see the lights of the huge chemical plant looming before us. It was a sprawling complex of pipe and steam. We were only about three hundred yards out now and would reach the opposite shore in only a couple of minutes. “The bomb must be on some kind of a timer. We haven’t got long. You know how to stop this tub?”
I still had the flashlight in my hand. We raced to the bridge and climbed the stairs to the pilothouse. There was no one inside. Toronto scanned the controls.
“See if you can raise the Coast Guard.”
I looked upriver at the patrol boat. Even at the rate they were closing, unless we could find a way to stop or slow down, there was no way they’d reach us before we hit the shore. Given what this boat was packing, it was probably just as well.
I found the radio in a panel overhead and turned the dial to switch it on, but it was dead.
“Looks like they’ve disabled it.”
“Figures.” He punched a couple of buttons and pulled back on the throttle. The big diesels kept up their steady whine. “Looks like they’ve done something to these controls too.”
The tug was less than a hundred yards out now. I saw a sheriff’s patrol car, its beacons blazing, screaming across an access road beside the plant, paralleling us. Too little, too late.
“Wait a minute,” Toronto said. He bent down below the captain’s chair and ripped a panel from the sidewall to expose a bunch of wires. “Stand back.” He raised the M-16. “This’ll either stop this thing or blow us to kingdom come.”
“Got to be a better kingdom than this,” I said.
He fired a burst at the panel. It exploded in a hail of sparks.
We didn’t blow up, not yet anyway, and the boat’s big diesels suddenly died.
“We’re out of here,” I said.
“You got that right. How do you feel about ice water?”
The boat had slowed but was still drifting toward the shore. Getting too close for comfort.
We hit the water together. Two explosions washed over us, one on top of the other. The first was the icy blast of water that swallowed me whole, a shock of instant numbness and a powerful current pulling me downward with the weight of my boots and clothes. The second, following soon on the heels of the first, was the concussive wave of the tugboat’s detonation on the surface.
The blast slammed me deeper down into the inky current. I bounced against a gravelly bottom and hit my knee against a rock. Something large and solid struck my head.
I was drifting deep underwater, almost like being at the bottom of that pool with the wet suit on again, but this time in utter darkness and with no air. Who knew what had become of Toronto? I thought of a scene from when I was young, my mother and father holding on to me as we looked over the railing of a huge cascade of water. Had it been Niagara Falls?
I swam, but had no idea which way was up or down. I’d lost the bottom after bouncing off it and being pulled along by the current. Panic welled up inside me, but then like a horrific wave passed over me to be replaced by an eerie sort of calm, only to be replaced by the rising panic again.
I’d been underwater for nearly a minute now, I thought. Everything was beginning to go numb. I thought of all the years that had rushed by and all the time I’d wasted in my life, my own parents, Nicole and Camille and Marcia, Toronto’s dad. I didn’t have much time left.
The blinding light, when it broke through to me in the darkness, might just as well have been the sun. It was pretty far above, but now at least I knew where the surface was. I didn’t know if I could reach it, but I had to try.
I kicked and pulled upward as hard as I could. I felt nothing. Rising, I could see more light on the water to my left, more of a glow. But the light directly over me grew brighter and brighter. After what seemed like an eternity, I broke through the surface, gulping cold and smoke.
“Dad!” Nicole was leaning over the rail of the Coast Guard boat. “Dad! Grab the ring.”
36
Agent Grooms and Agent Briggs and Nolestar let us watch the arrests via a grainy black-and-white satellite video feed from the FBI office in downtown Charleston. It was like watching ghost cops on an old tape running on a cheap VCR. Higgins and eight scary-looking Stonewall Rangers wearing containment suits were captured and taken into custody while loading what they thought were cylinders of illegally undestroyed Sarin gas into the back of a van.
Toronto sat chewing a stick of gum with his dirty booted foot propped up on a chair. His arm lay limp in a sling from what the paramedics suspected was a cracked bone in his wrist. Nicole looked as though she were making a valiant attempt not to bite her fingernails as she watched the screens.
She’d done an incredible job of surveillance and keeping her head under pressure. When I didn’t call her back within our agreed-upon time frame, she’d gone to the Balthazar, where she watched my car for a while and even managed a discreet walk-by while the vehicle was still in the hotel lot to make sure I wasn’t dead or unconscious inside.
A few hours later, she had trailed Farraday and the Hispanic man who came to hot-wire it before driving it off to ditch it in the river. I was going to have to replace Betty’s Buick, but Nicole had done the right thing, staying with the perps and not worrying about possessions.
After that, she’d alerted the police to the car in the river. She and Deputy Nolestar and Agent Grooms, along with several others, trailed Farraday down to the tug at the river. I couldn’t have been more proud of her. I also couldn’t help but notice one of the younger agents in the room making eyes at her, but she paid him no attention.
Toronto’s father, Felipe, looking confused and vaguely pitiful in his rumpled suit and hat, had also been brought into the room and sat blankly watching the screens. Like the rest of us, he was being held as a material witness in the case.
Grooms left for several minutes before coming back into the room.
“Okay. Afraid the show’s over for now, folks.”
“Thanks for the tickets,” I said.
“We’ve got a lot more to talk with all you people about, but most of it can wait until morning. Hope none of you is planning on going anywhere for a while.”
I shook my head.
“I have to admit it. We owe you guys a debt of thanks. None of us realized Goyne and Farraday were playing us like that.”
“And now you get to try to find out how and why.”
He nodded. “May not be so easy … Let me ask you one more quick question. How much of all this do you think your friend Carew was privy too?”
“Enough for Farraday to shoot him in the back over it. With Chester’s background and sense of what had caused his bird to get sick, he must’ve suspected the high concentration of the chemicals Farraday was using to build the bomb.”
“Which, if Carew reported it and we’d had more time, might have eventually led us to suspect Farraday and Goyne were up to something besides the deal with the Stonewallers. … And that’s why Farraday killed the vet too. We checked with the lab that performed the tests, by the way, and that reporter whose name you gave us. You were right. The tests showed a high concentration of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil derivatives, same as we found in the cave.”
“What about Warnock?” I asked.
“M.E. says it could’ve been
suicide, but he’s leaning more toward homicide. The carbon monoxide killed him, but he may have been unconscious before he took the big sleep. That mark you noticed behind the ear was made by some kind of blunt object.”
“Goyne?”
“He’s the prime suspect. Especially given the money. Warnock was not a Stonewaller, but he was close friends with Higgins. When Goyne contacted Higgins about supposedly having chemicals for sale, Higgins went to Warnock asking about sources of money. You know, big donors who might be sympathetic to the cause.”
“He found some?”
“Apparently he did. We’re still not sure where. We’re trying to sort that all out. Looks like somewhere overseas.”
“So you think Goyne murdered Warnock in order to steal the money and also get rid of another potential witness?”
“Quite possibly. We had two of our own agents whom the Stonewallers had seen once before actually driving the truck when we moved in to make the arrests.”
“But if Goyne murdered Warnock for the money, why did he leave it all behind in Warnock’s Mercedes?”
“We knew the money to buy the weapons was coming into the country in the form of bearer bonds. We also knew that Warnock planned to trade them in for cash at three different local banks where he knew officers and could disguise the transactions as a legitimate transfer of funds for various clients. So we set it up with the banks to mark all of the bills with a new type of technology we’re using. But we didn’t tell Goyne any of that. At least I knew enough not to trust the man completely.”
“Goyne must have figured it out though even if Farraday didn’t.”
“Yeah. He must have sensed a trap.”
I glanced at Toronto. “Or he found out the cash was marked another way.”
The ATF agent cocked an eyebrow. “You know something we don’t?”
“Nothing I’d be willing to stake my word or my PI license on,” I said.
Resignation showed in Grooms’s face. “Yeah, well something caused my operator to flip on me and the fur is going to fly over this. Most likely my own. We’re either dealing with a lunatic genius here or another phenomenon altogether.”
Toronto hoisted himself from his seat with his one good arm. “Goyne is no lunatic. I’ll vouch for that,” he said.
“Mr. Toronto,” Grooms said. “I’m not sure yet how we’re going to deal with the matter of your escaping custody.”
Toronto shrugged and held out his free hand. “You want to arrest me again now?”
Grooms looked at Briggs and Nolestar. “No. Not at the moment I don’t.”
Toronto shrugged again and dropped his hand.
Grooms looked at Nicole. “If you don’t mind my saying so, Pavlicek, this is some daughter you’ve got here. If it weren’t for her, you and Mr. Toronto might still be at the bottom of the river.”
I smiled and winked at Nicole, who looked at the floor, embarrassed.
Just as we were about to leave Toronto went over to Felipe’s chair. The old man’s eyes were still glued on the TV monitor.
“Come on, Dad,” he said. “You need to give it up now.”
Felipe turned and rested his fingers on his son’s arm. “Jake, I … I thought it was … I didn’t know they was … I swear …”
Toronto said nothing.
“My whole life I been trying to do stuff, trying to keep up with things for the family, Jake. I never wanted to hurt you … never wanted …” The old man’s dry voice trailed off.
Grooms cleared his throat. Someone else scraped a chair on the floor. Almost involuntarily, everyone except Toronto momentarily turned to glance at the screens again to see what might be happening with the ghosts that were being displayed.
It snowed again the next morning. Heavy, moisture-laden flakes stuck to the branches and piled several inches high in the Carews’ driveway, the same way they had the night I’d talked with Chester by the fire a couple of years before. Betty Carew cooked up another big breakfast. I sat alone by the window in the dining room, drinking coffee and thinking of nothing for a change.
I was glad to be able to think at all. Both Toronto and I would have some explaining to do, with more to come;
but the fact that multiple law enforcement personnel had witnessed the boat drivers’ exchanging fire with us and that we’d been able to shut down the boat’s engines went a long way toward proving our intentions.
The small television in the kitchen was turned on. I could hear the steady drumbeat of sound vibrating through the walls. The media firestorm over the tugboat laden with explosives that had blown up just outside the chemical plant and the arrests involving the Stonewall Rangers was in full swing now. All the cable news and major networks had descended on Charleston, West Virginia, and the Kanawha River Valley like it was the next ground zero, which, come to think of it, it easily could have become.
The Feds didn’t want Jake’s, mine, or Nicole’s names brought to the media’s attention. I was more than happy to oblige. Kara Grayson had left a couple of messages on my office voice mail back in Charlottesville. I hadn’t gotten around to calling her back just yet.
Bo Higgins’s used-car dealership had been shut down, of course. Cameras were everywhere and eager-looking reporters and anchorpeople were running around looking for employees or customers or someone else to interview. Pictures of the J. Edgar Hoover FBI Building in Washington kept flashing on the screen as well, and there was even a news conference at the White House.
A lot was still being pieced together, but one thing seemed clear: Drew Slinger, the man who’d taken up falconry in order to become a killer, his neck already broken, had been blown to bits by the very bomb he had built. Colonel Patrick Goyne, the mastermind behind the plot to collect millions selling bogus chemical weapons while also conspiring to blow up a chemical plant, had managed to slip through the authorities’ fingers for now. And I had sat face-to-face with him only a couple of days before.
I couldn’t help replaying the events of the last few days in my mind to see if I might have missed something, if there’d been anything else I could have done.
For his part, Toronto, when I’d seen him out in the bam earlier, was already talking about how we needed to go after Goyne. But we still didn’t know if all his accomplices had been arrested or, for that matter, if anyone else in the government was involved, I reminded him. Besides, Goyne’s picture was plastered all over the papers, television, and the FBI Web site. The Feds and every other law enforcement agency in the country now had an APB out on the guy. If they couldn’t find him, it would be a long time before Toronto or I ever could.
The soft thud of the dining room door roused me from my thoughts. Betty Carew entered the room. She had a portable phone in her hand.
“Marcia’s on the phone,” she said. “For you.”
I thanked her as she stepped out again, put the phone to my ear, and said hello.
“Hello, Frank.”
“Hey. Good to hear your voice, Marsh.”
“I’ve been watching what happened on the news. I heard Chester’s name mentioned and I just wanted to make sure you and Nicky and Jake were all right.”
“We’re all okay,” I said. “Jake’s got a broken wrist, but I think he’ll survive.”
“So you were there then? You were involved?”
“We were.”
“I just can’t believe it. Poor Chester. And those other people too … and a bomb.”
“I know.”
“You doing okay with everything?”
“I’m sitting here watching it snow.”
There was silence on the line for a moment.
“For once, I have to say, I almost wish I could be there with you,” she admitted.
“Me too.”
I wanted to tell her I missed her and that maybe I loved her. I wanted to tell her a lot of things, but the words just wouldn’t come.
“I’ve got to go now. I’ve got to get to a class,” she said.
“Sure. Thanks for
calling.”
“I’m glad you’re okay,” she said.
“I’m glad you called.”
We told each other good-bye and hung up.
There was a soft knock on the door.
“Come in,” I said.
Jason Carew came scuffing into the dining room wearing his pajamas, his eyes still filled with sleep, his hair a tangled mess.
“Well, hello, pardner,” I said.
“Momma said you wanted to talk with me,” the boy said softly.
“That’s right, I do.”
He stood just inside the doorway and stared.
“Come on over and sit down.” I patted the seat of the dining room chair next to me.
He shuffled over and climbed into the chair with his back to the wall. We both sat and looked out the window.
“A lot more snow out there this morning,” I said.
“Yeah.”
“I heard on the TV there’s no school today.”
“Uh-uh. I haven’t been back anyway since Daddy died. But Momma says I have to go tomorrow if they’re open.”
“Your momma’s right.”
“Momma says she wants you and Mr. Toronto to have Daddy’s birds so you can take better care of them and take them hunting when they need to and all that.”
I nodded. “How do you feel about that?”
“I can take them hunting. I know how, I went with Daddy.”
“I bet you could. But the law says you have to wait until you’re fourteen.”
“I know. That’s what Momma says.”
“Is it okay then if Jake and I take care of them for a while? Just until you’re older, that is?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I guess it’d be all right.”
“It won’t quite be heaven.”
“I know.”
“But you wouldn’t want them to get sick or die or anything.”
“No.”
Outside, a squirrel carrying something in its mouth jumped across the lawn and scrambled up a tree looking for the safety of its nest to weather out the storm.
“You heard what happened last night?” I asked.