Payback sts-17

by Keith Douglass

  They had to have a GHQ somewhere. He’d have to think on that. It would be good to be home. Maybe Ardith would drop in. He dozed off thinking about her. Now there was a woman. Oh, yeah. He hoped she’d show up again in San Diego real soon.

  23

  NAVSPECWARGRUP-ONE

  Coronado, California

  It was dark when they landed at North Island and went by van to their quarters on the strand. The men cleaned their weapons, reloaded their combat vests with the usual ammo and supplies, and checked out over the Quarter Deck.

  Murdock and DeWitt sat in the small office, not quite ready to give it up for the day.

  “Where in hell did these Koreans come from?” DeWitt asked. “Been wondering if they might have arrived by commercial air. They did a lot of planning for this series of strikes.”

  “Been bugging me too, DeWitt. They must have a control group somewhere, a headquarters. We better find it and wipe it out or we could have these hit-and-run attacks for months.”

  Murdock looked at his second in command. “You have a minute?”

  “Sure. Milly doesn’t know when to expect me.”

  “DeWitt, the Navy is wasting your talent here in my platoon. You should have a platoon of your own. I’m putting a recommendation to Masciareli tomorrow that you get the next platoon opening here in GRUP-ONE.”

  Ed frowned slightly. “You don’t want me around?”

  “I depend on you too much, and you take up the slack. You deserve a platoon of your own.”

  “Yeah, and if and when I got it, I’d be out of the loop with this action platoon. Wouldn’t get in on all of the juicy assignments.”

  “Sure, and you wouldn’t get shot at so often. The average platoon here in the whole group averages only one action assignment a year. Most of them are no-shoot affairs. Milly will love it and you’ll still be with the platoons. Besides, you’ve had three serious wounds in the past two years. You’ve done your duty here, more than your duty.”

  “I want to ask you not to send in that paper, Skipper. I like it here. Keeps my juices running. A transfer, even if it meant my own platoon, is something I’ll have to think about. Don’t send in the paper until we talk again, okay?”

  Murdock watched his best friend. They had been through a lot of hell together these past three years. This was about the reaction he’d figured DeWitt would have.

  “Okay. Talk it over with Milly. Now get out of here and go play old married man.”

  DeWitt grinned. “Hey, thanks for the thought about the letter. I might go for it yet. I’m a long way off from another stripe, but wouldn’t hurt to be in a spot where it could happen. I’ll let you know.”

  He left the office, and Murdock put his feet up on the desk and let his mind wander. There had to be some answer to this North Korean affair. What kind of a GHQ would they need? Could a submarine offshore do it? They had two subs that he knew of. Not likely. They’d need an onshore headquarters for good communications and movement. He was going to concentrate on the problem and worry it to death until he had something he could take to the brass. The fucking North Korean brains had to be right there on the coast somewhere.

  * * *

  Jack Mahanani checked his watch as he pulled away from the BUD/S parking lot. It was seven-thirty civilian time. The DEA guys would be home, but the operator might still be on. He drove to Chula Vista just south of San Diego and found a phone booth. He dug the number out of his wallet and dialed it.

  “Good evening, this is the DEA task force.”

  “Hi, this is the Reverend. Do you have a message for me?”

  “The Reverend? Oh, yes, just a moment, it’s here somewhere. Yes. I have it. We have two of our men who want to talk to you. They told me to set up a time convenient to you and they will be there. They suggested a restaurant might be a good meeting place.”

  “Good. Tonight at eight-thirty in a place in Pacific Beach called Tony’s. I’ll meet them at the bar.” He hung up quickly before they could trace the call. Then he remembered they for sure would have caller ID on all of their phones, so they would know what phone number the call came from. It wouldn’t help them any. He took a deep breath. Was he going to meet with them? Did he really want to set up a raid on these smugglers? Damn right. He had to get out of this smuggling trap and stay alive. He would make the DEA promise him that his name would not be mentioned and that he would get a guarantee of no prosecution for his part. Yes, it could work, if they could nail all of the smugglers working at the casino.

  He looked at his watch. Plenty of time to drive to PB. He used to live over there, knew all the best spots. He’d get to Tony’s early and have a steak. He could use a good steak about now. Sure, then what did he tell the DEA guys? Hey, I just happen to be a narcotic mule and I wanted to spill my guts to you for immunity? Actually, that was about it.

  He’d start with the gambling and the hole he’d dug for himself, and then talk about Harley and that damn Martillo. Yeah, he could make a good case for himself. He wouldn’t tell them too much, not even which casino, not right away. There were seven or eight Indian-run casinos in the county by this time. Yes, he could do it.

  Halfway into Pacific Beach, a section of San Diego, a water main break closed off the main access and he had to take a five-mile detour. When he got to Tony’s and parked, it was five minutes to the meet time. He was sure the DEA guys had arrived early and had two or three other men lurking about.

  A man read a newspaper in his car in the faint light coming from the dome. He was a ringer for sure. Mahanani shrugged and walked into the restaurant. He hadn’t incriminated himself yet. He wouldn’t unless he got a guarantee in writing of total immunity and his name not being used.

  He went into the bar and checked the men standing there. There was only one pair of men: both in suits and both looked like cops. He walked up and stood beside them and ordered a beer. One looked at him.

  “Are you the Reverend?” he asked.

  “Might be. Who are you?”

  The man flashed a badge that could have been from any agency.

  “I better take a better look at the badge,” Mahanani said. The man handed it to him. DEA, the right one. They moved to a booth toward the back and waved the waitress away.

  “Now, you said you know about a mule operation.” The larger man did the talking. No names were given or asked for.

  “Right. I got suckered into it. I was stupid.” He told them about the gambling and how he was threatened and how they would go to his commanding officer if he didn’t pay up or work for them as a mule out of TJ.

  “So, you Navy or Marines?”

  “Navy. I would have been booted out of the service.”

  “What do you want us to do?”

  “First I want it in writing that I will not be prosecuted in any way for what I might have done, and I want to be completely anonymous. I want to get out of this without getting killed by the druggers.”

  “That we can’t guarantee, the not-getting-killed part. If your story is good enough, I can get the immunity and we’ll never use your name. How about some details?”

  “Not until I get that letter from your local office chief on stationery that I won’t be prosecuted and my name will be kept out of it.”

  “The problem is we’ll need more than that to get the letter.”

  “Fine, I’ll go to the San Diego Police narc squad.”

  The men whispered a moment.

  “All right, you said TJ to San Ysidro, numerous trips, with coke worth about half a million. What’s that, fifty kilos?”

  “I don’t know. I never saw the drugs going or coming.”

  “How many trips do they make a week?”

  “My guess is five or six, but I can’t be sure.”

  “That’s enough. Give me tomorrow. Then tomorrow night you call in and ask for a message for the Reverend just the way you did this time.”

  “Okay, but if I don’t get the letter, you can forget all about this. I know a little how
you guys operate. I know you’ve probably got pictures of me by now, and that one of your men out front has my license plate. Please don’t run it. You don’t need to know who I am. If this deal falls through, I’ll deny everything, even if one of you is wearing a wire. We do this my way, or you don’t get a good-sized smuggling operation iced out of business.”

  He stood and left before either of them could respond.

  Outside, he went to the car where the man was still reading the newspaper and tapped on the window. The man rolled down the window.

  “Hey, your two DEA buddies inside said you can close up and go home. The party’s over.”

  Mahanani grinned at the surprise and shock on the agent’s face. Then Mahanani laughed and walked up the street to his car. Nobody followed him as he drove away.

  * * *

  Murdock went over and over what they knew about the North Koreans assault on the United States of America. He charted it and evaluated it and grouped the acts and separated them, and in the end came up with nothing. It could have been run by one master control, or six or eight different groups could have been launched, funded, given the know-how and weapons, and told to go and do as much damage as they could. He drove home with the start of a headache.

  When he pulled into his parking slot at the apartment, he saw lights on in his second-floor unit. For a moment he tensed. No, if the Ks were coming for him, they wouldn’t turn on the lights. Either he had left them on when he left the last time, or someone had come for a visit.

  He ran up the steps, pulled open the front door, and found Ardith Manchester a step away. She wore a pure white silk blouse and a sleek, tight-fitting black skirt. Her long blond hair hung over one shoulder and framed her beautiful face.

  “Hi, sailor, welcome home,” she said with the sly grin that he had loved forever.

  He swept her up in his arms and walked her across the room to the sofa, where he put her down gently, sat beside her, and kissed her soundly.

  She came up for air smiling. “Now I know that tourist-class flight was worth it. Master Chief MacKenzie said he thought you’d be home tomorrow.”

  “He’s not always right.” He pulled her into his arms so her head rested on his shoulder. “Now, any other reason you flew all the way out here from Washington, D.C.?”

  “One small reason, not really important.”

  “How unimportant is it?” He watched her. She was hiding something. There was a hint of excitement in her voice and her brows were a little too high for normal.

  “Nothing we need to talk about really. I was just about to get dinner. I’ll change the menu. I see you have some good-looking pork chops in the freezer.”

  He held her fast. “Ardith, that other unimportant reason why you came?”

  “Oh, nothing. Actually it’s minor, just a small job offer. Now let’s get dinner. Do stuffed pork chops sound okay?”

  He held her. “Just a small job offer? A job for a midget, right? Nobody over three feet tall need apply?”

  Ardith laughed. “Well, the job is for a normal-sized person, but I’m not sure that I want it. I’m just feeling them out. They talked to me in Washington.”

  “And they bought your ticket out here?”

  “Well, yes. But that’s common enough.”

  “Just some little job offer. So tell me about it.”

  He let her go, and she pushed back and he saw the sparkle in her eyes, the anticipation spreading over her face.

  “It’s a highly respected firm in the software industry. Yes, a dot-com, but one that isn’t tied to dot-com customers. It’s keyed to industry as a whole, and works for many hundreds of different clients in every field.”

  “And what would you do for them?”

  “I’d be the assistant manager of the creative applications department. We take a company’s problem, figure out a solution to it, and design and develop the software to take care of the problem. It’s so creative and exciting that I can hardly sit still.”

  “But your background isn’t in computers.”

  “Doesn’t have to be. In fact they told me they wanted someone in the creative side who wasn’t a computer person. Then I wouldn’t be thinking ahead that it couldn’t be done, or it would be too expensive or too time-consuming. I get the ideas and build the plans to solve the problem. Somebody else does the design and application work.”

  “Some little job offer.”

  “Okay, so I lied. It was worth it to see your expression when I explained it.”

  “When?”

  “I go in to see them tomorrow.”

  “Now we talk about the other. Do you really want to leave government work? You’ve been happy back there with all the conniving, backbiting, lying politicians. Your father excluded, of course.”

  “We’ve talked about this before. I love my work in D.C., but this seems so much more exciting, so on the edge of the science of business, education. They even do some work for state governments. Do I want to leave? I’m not sure. If this job works out, it would be a tremendous move.” She reached up and kissed him tenderly. “Then there is that other reason I want to come out here. But we don’t talk about that.”

  Murdock gently eased her down on the sofa and lay half on top of her. He kissed her nose, then both eyes, and gently brushed her lips with his. “Now, little lady, let’s talk about that other reason for you to move out to San Diego.”

  He kissed her again and she moaned softly. When the kiss ended she stroked his face lovingly.

  “Hey, there, cowboy. Do you want dinner sooner or later?”

  “I think I’ll vote for later. Do you want to call the roll?”

  “Then later wins by a landslide.” They sat up and both grinned. He cupped one of her breasts and bent and kissed it through the white silk blouse.

  “Hey, maybe it would be better if we continued this discussion on the merits of the issue before the Senate in the bedroom.”

  “I’ll vote for that,” Murdock said. “We can have dinner any old time.”

  Much later, over dinner, Ardith was enthusiastic about the job. That was part of it, he knew. She also glowed as she always did after a good romp in bed.

  “It’s a firm offer. I can take it or turn it down. One good thing is the salary, a hundred and fifty thousand a year.” Her eyes were bright. He could see her anticipation, her delight.

  “Wow, that’s three times as much as I’m making. Won’t that irritate me and make me angry?”

  “No, because we’ll have a joint account.” She said it with a straight face, then laughed and kissed him. “The money is good, I get a stock-option plan, insurance, a matching retirement plan, and I’m in line for manager of the department as soon as the current one retires in about a year.”

  “No lawyer work?”

  “Not a bit. Oh, I’ll do some pro bono for one of the shelters or a woman’s rape group or some such, but none on the job.”

  “Sounds like you have it all worked out,” he said, his voice neutral, noncommittal.

  Ardith studied him. This was a surprise. She thought he’d be enthusiastic, maybe ecstatic. “I did some investigation of the firm,” she said. “It’s listed everywhere. Most agencies came up with a solid four points for them out of four. Locally, they do a lot of charity work, and are involved with two high schools. Yes, I do think it would be a good career move for me.”

  Murdock picked her up and hugged her, then spun her around off the floor, one slipper flying off her foot.

  “Marvelous, wonderful, great. I just wanted you to be sure. I didn’t want to seduce you out here and have you pining away for good old D.C. and the government flap. I’m delighted. Now quit frowning. If you want the job, I’m all for it. How did you find it?”

  “They found me actually. A friend of a friend knew they were hunting. She turned them down. Her husband wouldn’t let her leave D.C. So she gave them my number and they called, we talked. I gave them a tour of the Senate, and one luncheon led to dinner and then a day later,
the firm job offer was faxed from here in town.”

  He kissed her seriously, and sat her back down at her place at the table. “Your dinner is getting cold,” he said.

  After the dishes were stashed in the washer, Murdock brought up his small problem. He told her everything she didn’t know about the North Koreans and what they had done, and asked her how to evaluate how they did it. Was it a mass of individuals set loose or a closely controlled campaign?

  Ardith made a list as he talked, then went over it. “You say it started with a strange ship near an oil-drilling rig, and then an undersea structure of some kind near the rig. Then all these other elements.”

  Murdock jumped up and pounded his fist into the air like Tiger Woods when he sank a long put. “I’ve got it. I know how they did it now. I know where their GHQ is. Now all I have to do is prove to the brass that what I think is true.”

  24

  Murdock sailed into his small office at 0700 and at once began working on his laptop computer. He spelled it out the best he could by putting down the litany of what the North Koreans had done in chronological order. Then he made his conclusions.

  “The North Koreans did nothing until we examined their underwater building near the oil-drilling rig near Santa Barbara. Only then did they launch their attacks.

  “It seems to me that the underwater unit may be their hidden headquarters that launches and controls their attacks. I think that they use the oil rig for their antennas to keep in touch with their many units.

  “It is my suggestion that an immediate investigation be made of the oil-drilling platform, checking for antennas, and that all radio traffic from the rig be monitored.

  “I also suggest that we explore the best way to open up that sealed underwater building near the tower, and if we can do that, I feel that we will have stopped the attacks on our shores by the North Koreans.”