“And what about my being Vann’s escort?”
“Like I said, two weeks. You don’t come up with something really dramatic in that time, you’ll—what is it, Miss. Snow?”
“There’s something going on at NIS. I just talked to my source over there, and he says there’s been a flap on all day in the front office, with the admiral talking to some of the JAG lawyers downstairs and the EA cutting everyone off at the knees who dares even to speak to him.
Robby said the admiral had left for the day, but the security guards say he’s on the way back in.”
“Where’s Rennselaer?” Summerfield asked.
“I guess he’s still there,” Grace replied. “Robby said he was meeting someone.”
Summerfield stood up. “Maybe the call to NIS from the vice’s office has started some kind of fire,” he said.
“I have visions of the Japanese embassy burning their papers on the night of December sixth,” Dan said.
“Grace, maybe you and I should go over there. My car’s right here.”
“Is that wise?” Summerfield asked. “You heard Captain Vann—he’s right about getting this thing back in proper channels, and your only mandate to play is through him.”
“If that bastard Rennselaer had my house burned down, with me supposedly in it, don’t need anybody’s mandate,” Grace said. “Dan, let’s go.”p>
“But there isn’t a damn thing they can do tonight, except stew,”
Summerfield argued. “Let them panic, and then you take Vann over there in the morning after they’ve been sweating all night. There’s another thing: Both of you ought to get off the streets until they pick up that guy Malachi Ward. Vann said they think he’s still in the city.”
Grace shook her head. “No. The District police might take a week to get going on this, especially after Vann reports the meeting tonight with the vice chief. I wouldn’t be stunned if his bosses tell him to back off.
No. I want to talk to Rennselaer, and now would be nice.”
it was full dark when Malachi parked the pickup truck, rigged once again with the Metro logo and flasher, in front of the large abandoned factory building that occupied the two blocks across the street from the Forge Building in the Navy Yard. The bored guard at the front gate had bought his story of a Metro bus stranded in the Navy Yard with a casual wave, and Malachi had sailed through. He backed the truck into a space between two loading docks at the front of the deserted building. The docks were to one side of two large steel doors, which were partially opened, revealing the cavernous interior of the building. He would have put it in the building except for the fact that there was a huge pile of metal scrap blocking the entrance.
He checked his watch: 6:45. He stayed in the truck for a few minutes and looked around. The building was big.
It appeared to be about ten stories high, two hundred feet wide, and nearly twice that long, its other end extending all the way to the river. A sign whose letters were carved into the stone lintel above the loading dock said turret lathe building. There was no light in the building except for what was reflecting through a row of skylights from the floodlights on the power station next door. There appeared to be some very large machinery inside, but he could not make out any details.
Surprisingly, the captain had called back right away and hurriedly agreed to a meeting. He had designated the Navy Yard as the meeting place. They would meet on board the museum ship, the retired destroyer USS Barry, which was moored to the pier across the gun park from river end of the Forge Building. “There’s no one on board at night,” the captain had said, “and the main-deck hatches are all secured. There’s a sliding chain-link fence and gate at the head of the pier, but you can get around it at one end. Come up the after gangway to the main deck and walk around. There’s lots going on here right now, so come between seven and seven-thirty. I’ll find you.”
Malachi smiled in the darkness. Yeah, I’ll just bet you will. Meet me on a deserted ship parked on the Anacostia River after dark. Right. Well actually, that suited Malachi just fine. He was dressed in khaki trousers, a dark red shirt, and his black windbreaker, the one with the hole in it from when he had cut out some material for his eye patch. The patch had helped; his eye, although still very sore, had stopped its broadband transmission of pain back into his brain, helped perhaps by the Harper. Malachi checked that the Browning .380 in his waistband holster was chambered, patted the Bernardelli .25 auto in his right sock, and then slipped on some black leather gloves. He was about to get out when he detected oncoming headlights. He ducked down in the front seat of the truck as a gray Navy Yard security truck cruised by. The cop driving paid no attention to him. Very good, he thought. The flasher unit makes it invisible.
He waited until the truck was out of sight before getting out. He left the keys in the ignition and shut the door quickly to stop the warning chimes. It was a cool evening, but the night air was heavy with the promise of fog from the river. He was about to set out for the gun park when the security truck came back by, so he stepped through the doors of the Turret Lathe Building.
After the truck went by, he looked around. There were huge dark lumps of machinery dotting the football field-sized floor: metal presses, giant milling machines, vertical drill presses, and, in the center, the largest metal lathe he had ever seen. Suspended between its two turrets was a cylindrical gray steel mass that appeared to be more than fifty feet long from end to end.
High in the overhead was a gantry crane track, with one large and one smaller crane parked in the middle of the building, their diamond-shaped hook heads positioned over the central turret lathe. In the rose quartz light reflecting through the skylights a hundred feet above his head, he could make out the larger pieces of machinery, but the floor was littered with piles of junk, scrap metal, rusting barrels, and heaps of electrical cable, all clumped indistinctly in the shadows. The entire place stank of rust, ancient oil and grease, and rotting electrical insulation. There was a blast of steam from the power plant next door that startled him back . i into motion.”
He checked the street once more and then walked down along the side of the abandoned factory, staying in the shadows in case there were any foot patrols, although this part of the Navy Yard seemed to be deserted.
He walked as quickly as his injured leg would allow, going down the length of the Turret Lathe Building, until he was even with the end of the Forge Building, its lighted windows visible across the street to his left. The entrance to the Forge Building was obscured
by a small brick building whose sign identified it as the Navy Yard chapel. Beyond, he could see the slant piers along the Anacostia River and the masts of the museum ship rising over the nearest building. He slipped into a darkened doorway and watched for a few minutes, getting his one good eye night-adapted and checking again for sentries or pedestrians, but there was no one moving along the shadowy industrial street. He went one more short block and then crossed the street into the end of the gun park.
The gun park was part of the museum complex. It consisted of about two acres of ground wedged between the Forge Building and the waterfront, with one of every kind of naval gun ever manufactured in the Navy Yard on display—from a single sixty-two-foot-long six teen-inch battleship gun to a collection of chunky black iron Civil War mortars. There was even a World War I railroad gun, a twelve-inch naval rifle mounted on a locomotive frame, sitting on a section of track alongside a twin-armed guided-missile launcher. Across the street from the park was the destroyer, its four-hundred-foot length blocking out the lights on Boiling Air Force Base on the opposite shore of the Anacostia.
Malachi entered the park at the southwestern end, creeping silently through the shadows, moving from gun to gun, stopping and listening, and then moving again.
The captain might very well be waiting here, knowing that this was the only protected approach to the ship.
Finally, he reached the German U-boat conning-tower display, and he crouched down in its shadow to examine the ship across t
he street.
There was a single wide street running down along the entire waterfront, and it was well lighted. Directly across the street was the public entrance to the ship, which was moored to a wide concrete pier that had a tall chain-link fence mounted all the way across the foot of the pier.
There was a darkened guard shack standing by a sliding gate in the fence. Malachi remembered seeing the ship museum when it was opened; there was normally a sailor in the guard shack who directed visitors down the pier to the aftermost gangway, which went up to the superstructure. Departing visitors were routed down from the forecastle area on a second gangway, past the guard shack, and back out to the street.
But now the ship was darkened. Its main decks were well lighted by the streetlights along the pier, but its upper decks, being higher than the streetlights, were in shadow.
Malachi realized that there was no way he could cross that street and get to the ship without being seen by someone hiding up high in the ship. There was also no way he could get to the back of the ship and sneak aboard that way, because the piers slanted out into the river, leaving the stern of the ship sixty feet away from the waterfront bulkhead. Now if he were James Bond, he thought, he would go back down the waterfront, drop into the river, swim back to the ship, and then climb aboard over the propeller guards, although he doubted even James Bond would want to stick even a finger in the heavily polluted Anacostia River. But with only one eye and a gimp leg, he was definitely not up to Mr. Bond tonight.
He looked down the waterfront street for signs of parked cars or other surveillance, but the street and the visitors’ parking lot were empty.
The only signs of life were coming from the steady stream of traffic bumping over the Welsh Memorial Bridge at the near end of the Navy Yard and a row of lighted windows behind him in the Forge Building. NIS must be working late tonight.
Well, this was supposed to be a final, friendly business meeting between the contractor and his employer.
Maybe not all that friendly, but it was certainly not supposed to be a shoot-out at the O.K. Corral, either. He had told the captain that he was going to leave town and disappear but that he needed five thousand.
in cash to pay off the people who were going to get him out of town. The captain had hesitated only for a moment, then agreed to the meeting. He said he would need to know some things before he would pay, and specifically, he needed to know what evidence a certain Miss. Snow had relating to the truth behind the Hardin murders.
Malachi had replied that she had one interesting bit, which he was sure the captain would find well worth the money.
So, just a final little business meeting. The thing to do was to stand up and walk across the street, slip around the end of that sliding gate, and walk up the brow of the ship, easy as you please, like he had every right to be there. Once on the ship, and assuming there hadn’t been a hail of gunfire from the ship’s top hampers, he would see what was possible. He figured the captain did indeed want to know what had happened in Georgetown and whether or not the people in Opnav had figured out who the great man was, so the most likely scenario was probably a “stick ‘em up, don’t turn around, walk straight ahead and do what I tell you”
drill. Which would be fine with Malachi. The only trick would be to convince the captain to stick the gun right in his back. After that, it would be simple, a piece of cake even.
He took one last look up and down the street, then stood up and walked nonchalantly over to the fence, trying hard to minimize his limp. He did not hurry, and he kept his hands visible. And while he was counting on the captain’s being the amateur that he probably was, the thought of a silenced .22 long rifle Colt Woodsman with a laser scope did cross his mind, raising fine beads of sweat on his forehead, despite the cool of the evening.
He reached the end of the fence nearest the water and looked around again, but he did not look up at the ship. The ship’s towering overhanging bow reflected little lapping sounds from under the pier, and something splashed in the trash-filled water. He grabbed the chain link and swung his body around the end, hanging briefly out over the black waters of the Anacostia. He dropped lightly back onto the pier on the other side, stumbling a little because of his leg and his one-eyed lack of depth perception. He exhaled quietly when he landed on the concrete; that would have been the place for the captain to have taken his shot.
So this was going to be a “talk first, shoot second” deal. Works for me, Malachi thought as he headed for the after gangway.
dan banged his hands impatiently on the steering wheel as they inched along in bumper-to-bumper traffic on the Southeast Freeway. They could see the tall, lighted stacks of the Navy Yard power plant several blocks in the distance off to their right, but they were getting nowhere due to an accident about a mile up ahead. His chin bumped on the neck brace when he had to jam on the brakes. He tugged angrily at the Velcro straps and took the brace off in frustration, pitching it into the backseat.
“Damn it!” he exclaimed. “It’s seven-fifteen. Why is there all this damn traffic still out here?”
“Maybe Summerfield was right,” Grace said. “The closer I get to a face-to-face confrontation with Rennselaer, the better waiting a day looks.”
“No,” Dan said. “I think your intuition is right about Vann and the D.C. police. His bosses are going to want to go slowly before they go tangling with someone in the Pentagon at the VCNO level. And if our man is the director of the NIS, that will complicate it even more— NIS is another police organization. If we confront Rennselaer tonight, it will increase the pressure on both of them.”
“You think he’s the guy?”
“I do now. The vice chief had one really strong point: He has too much to lose. Shit, you know what? We should have taken the Metro—it goes right to the Navy Yard—three stops from the Pentagon.”
malachi stepped off the after brow leading up to the 01 level on the Barry, then passed under a large canvas awning covering the entire antisubmarine rocket launcher deck. The tour guide’s podium was secured for the night next to a closed hatch. There was an interior communications panel of some kind next to the door, with a row of small white lights across the top, but no sign of people. He could feel a faint breeze coming off the river up here now that he was out from under the windbreak created by the ship. He half-expected the ship to be creaking and moving in the current, but it was dead-silent and motionless, a testament to its four thousand-ton displacement. He walked over to the base of the ASROC missile launcher and looked aft. There was a single steep ladder leading down to the fantail area, where the after gun mount loomed in the darkness.
With the hatch into the superstructure closed up, he would have to go down to the main deck and then work his way forward. He started over toward the ladder but stopped in the shadows when he saw the Navy Yard security truck coming down the waterfront. The truck cruised by slowly, the guard’s face a white blob in the driver’s side window. But then it turned the corner behind the Forge Building and was gone.
Malachi knew nothing about ships, but he figured the captain would be somewhere forward and up, away from all those lights on the pier. He stepped carefully down the ladder, favoring his leg, his depth perception badly skewed by the eye patch. Long John Silver, ready to poop the mizzen-whatever, he thought as he reached the fantail area of the main deck. He stopped and looked around, but there was no sign of the captain or anyone else. The gun mount was much bigger than it looked from the pier, its rounded steel sides glinting in the streetlight. The destroyer’s deck was surprisingly uneven, and it seemed to have sand painted on its surface.
He walked over to the starboard side and looked up the long, narrow expanse of steel leading forward along the main deck. The port side was in full view of the pier lights, but the starboard side was entirely dark, with only the Boiling Field hangar lights a half mile across the river providing any illumination.
He realized that he was profoundly tired—tired of this stupid game, tired of al
l these people he had to work for, picking up after them as they scurried through their precious little tin-soldier careers. You can still walk away, Malachi. The world is probably going to fall in on these two sooner rather than later. Walk away. Go back and get in the truck and drive out of here and straight west out of town into the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Even as part of his mind thought about it, the other part compelled him to start walking forward up the starboard side, trying to adjust his one good eye to the sudden darkness.
The walkway up the main deck was only three feet wide, with a five-strand bronze wire lifeline on the outboard side and the ship’s deck house superstructure on the inboard side. He could hear the wash of the river’s current against the ship’s steel sides ten feet below. The river stank of mud, rotting tree branches, oil, and sewage in about equal proportions. He thought he could see things floating by in the current, but he did not want to know what they were. He walked two hundred feet forward, past the after deck house hatches, under the boat davits, past a ladder amidships going back up to the 01 level, until he came to a tunnel-like structure, just forward of a hatch leading into the ship directly below the bridge. It appeared that the tunnel, which was the same width as the main-deck walkway and about eight feet high, led out onto the forecastle area through a heavy steel door, which was closed.
Malachi stopped. The tunnel was pitch-black. He thought he could see the shapes of industrial gas bottles mounted against the river side of the tunnel. To his immediate left was a hatch marked forward athwartship passageway, and under those words was a painted label enumerating the compartments accessible through that hatch: the officers’ wardroom, the forward radar-equipment room, and the forward fire room. Malachi examined the hatch and saw that it was not locked. He wondered if the captain might be somewhere inside the ship. That would make it tough.
But, no, he had said he would meet him—what was the word? Yeah, topside.
That sounded like outside. He peered again into the darkened tunnel.
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