Even with two good eyes, he would not have been able to see anything.
Were the shapes along the exterior wall all gas bottles, or was someone there? He should have brought a light of some kind. He had his butane lighter, but he knew he would be night blind the instant he fired it.
Should he go inside the ship? Or forward? He put his hand on the hatch’s steel actuating handle. It was cold and slightly wet to the touch. He looked up at the bridge wing two decks above him, half-expecting to see a figure up there, but there was nothing.
He took a breath and decided to go forward. Putting his right hand on the .380 in his waistband, he started forward. As the shapes on the outboard wall became visible, he saw that they were gas bottles, five feet high, and marked with white labels reading nitrogen, argon, acetylene. He stopped just inside the tunnel, trying to night-adapt his good eye. The tunnel seemed to go on another fifteen or twenty feet. He looked behind him, where he could see down the entire length of the main deck, which appeared to be bathed in daylight compared with the tunnel.
He turned around again and took another step, then another. Stop. Was that someone ahead? He blinked his left eye rapidly and drew the gun.
There was a figure up ahead, standing motionless against the inboard bulkhead. But there was something funny about it. The head, something funny about the head.
“That’s Oscar,” a familiar voice said from behind.
Malachi jumped. “Don’t turn around, Malachi. We’re all armed here tonight. So lose the gun. Just put it down on the deck and kick it through the breaks into the river. Slowly. That’s good.”
Malachi knelt slightly, and with a twinge of regret, he put the Browning down on the steel deck. He was tempted to palm the .25 auto out of his sock, then decided not to. It was the captain’s gun he was after, and besides, his hands were better than any gun—and quieter.
He stood back up and nudged the automatic with his foot, then nudged it again until it went out a scupper hole and fell into the river with a chunky splash.
“Very good, Oscar, in case you’re wondering, is a dummy. We use Oscar to practice man-overboard recoveries.
He’s made of kapok, so he floats. We throw him over the side and then drive the ship back to find him and pick him up. He lives up here in the weather breaks. It’s a good place for dummies.”
Malachi heard what sounded like the hatch opening wide behind him, and then there was a clank, as if the hatch was being latched open against the inboard superstructure bulkhead. Son of a bitch had been just inside that hatch. Waiting for him to go past, up into that tunnel. Had probably heard him stop.
“So now what?” Malachi asked.
“So now I tie off a loose end, Malachi,” the captain said.
“You mean you don’t really want to know how much Ms. Snow knows? You think you’re going to get away with just shooting me and putting me in the river, do you? You think I haven’t left some insurance out there?
I mean, I know who we’re all protecting here.”
The captain laughed. “No you don’t. Keep your hands out where I can see them, Malachi. That’s good.
And what I think is that you never expected me to get the drop on a pro like you. That there is no ‘open this if I don’t come back’ letter, because you don’t know anyone to leave such a letter with. You’re the original lone wolf, Malachi; you’ve told me that a hundred times. But you’ve outlived your usefulness. I guess you’d outlived your usefulness when you ran that girl down two years ago. Did you mean to do that, Malachi?”
Malachi was thinking hard. He had to get the captain to come closer. Get that gun within striking range.
“She cut me,” Malachi said. “When I went to warn her away from your great man. Last woman who cut me cost me my manhood. It was the least I uld do.”
“It was just a simple contract, Malachi. Convincingly tell the skirt to get lost. And look what happened.”
The captain’s voice sounded a little louder, maybe a little closer.
Good. He was counting on the captain not wanting to shoot him out here, because a shot would bring the cops. Inside would be different. Had to nail that gun before he was forced inside the ship. Malachi began to take the weight off his bad leg to position his body for a turning strike. Closer, please.
“And the boy, Malachi—what really happened there?
I can’t see you going to Philly and doing that little job.”
“I have some connections. It wasn’t all that hard.
They were just supposed to talk to him, too. But he got self-righteous, noisy. Didn’t want to listen. Neither of them was a good listener.”
Closer. Definitely closer now.
“That’s kind of what I imagined. Take your coat off, Malachi.”
What? My coat? Oh hell yes! Take it off, left arm first, hold the right arm, bunch it a little, then use it as a flail. Whip it around and nail the gun. The coat would give him a three-foot reach. He began to unzip the windbreaker, easing his body to the left ever so slightly to give himself room to swing it, then shifting his weight back to the injured leg. No way around it.
“You getting cold, Captain?” he asked, saying anything to distract the man behind him as he pulled the zipper down and then started to pull his left arm clear.
“Like cold feet? I think the cops are onto this little shandy, by the way. They’ve been through my place.
Who knows what they found, hunh?”
“Who indeed, Malachi.”
Malachi heard a metallic noise behind him as he began to cock his right arm, the jacket hanging free now, his left hand closing over his right hand to propel the snap properly. One chance now. Take a deep breath.
Go low and whip—
And then he was down on the deck, his head ringing, his breath arrested in his chest, and his legs jerking around beneath him as if they belonged to someone else. What the hell had happened? Can’t breathe.
Take a breath. Chest doesn’t work. Breathe, man. He hadn’t heard a shot.
Breathe, goddamn it. Never hear the one that gets you. What the hell—he could sense that the captain was standing practically on top of him, bending down to look at him. Something in his hand. Not a gun.
“This is a stun gun, Malachi. Shoots a little dart, trails a little titanium wire, and delivers fifteen-thousand volts. No amps, just volts.
That’s why I needed the jacket off, Malachi. But it does work, doesn’t it? Having a little trouble catching your breath, Malachi? Give it time.
And that’s a terrific-looking eye you have there. A lady hit you with her purse, did she?”
The captain straightened up as Malachi strained to focus on getting that breath, getting some air, and it was coming, but just barely coming.
God, it was hard, and his damn legs were still in spasm, his right shin screaming again, and the patch had come off his eye when he fell. He could feel the cool night air against his battered skin. Breathe, damn it, breathe. He felt his diaphragm move, then heard a croak escape his lips. He started to gather himself.
“Was that a little bitty breath, Malachi? I guess we’re not quite there, are we?”
And then another buzzing blast hit him, knocking him back down on the steel deck as if he were a feather, his own muscles bouncing his body around, the vision in his left eye closing down to a red-rimmed circle as he fought to cling to consciousness. His ears were roaring and his right eye was suddenly blazing with pain again.
His face smashed up against one of the gas bottles.
Then he became dimly aware that the captain had him by his feet and was dragging him across the steel deck, and when his eye bumped on something on the deck, he slipped into a black fog, not quite fully out, but absolutely, totally helpless, the jacket dropping out of his right hand as he went over the edge into unconsciousness.
He awoke with his face pressed into what felt like oily steel, and there was a smell of fuel oil in his nostrils.
His body felt like one big bruise, and t
here was a salty taste of blood in his mouth. The skin on his face felt raw and scraped. He tried to open his left eye, but it was not obeying. His brain dimly perceived that he was inside, inside the ship. His arms were bound behind his back, and it felt as if his feet were tied together, too, but he couldn’t move them, anyway. His whole left side felt bruised and battered. And then he was moving again, being moved, sliding up what felt like planks of wood against his face, strong hands grabbing him by his belt and sliding him up an incline and then off the end of the board onto smooth steel, which had a powdery feel to it, and the smell of oil was replaced by the smell of something else. He desperately tried to open his eye, but none of his muscles would respond, and his optical nerves were jammed with whorls of red and orange and bright green. He tried to cry out, but he could manage only a long groan as more of his body slid off the end of the plank onto this strange surface. Into this strange surface: The sound around him had changed, and he became aware that he was inside something, something long, and curved. Then he felt his shoes coming off and his socks being yanked roughly down his legs and off his feet, the .25 clattering down onto a steel deck. He tried to raise his head and get that one eye open, and barely succeeded. There was light behind his head, back by his feet, his bare feet, but he could not understand what he was seeing, the round, smooth, curving surface, covered with holes, some kind of cylinder, and then another lightning bolt, this time applied to his bare feet, galvanizing his entire body into a giant convulsive leap, the top of his head hitting something very hard, tears in his eyes, both eyes. The now terribly familiar problem of breathing, the excruciatingly hard effort to make the diaphragm work, to draw even a piece of a breath.
Then a moment of silence, followed by the probing beam of a flashlight, shockingly white in his left eye, which was now opened. He tried to turn his head away from the dazzling light, but his neck was made of rubber.
“Know where you are, Malachi?”
The captain’s voice. But distant, as if he was speaking down a tunnel.
Wrong. This whole thing had gone very wrong. He was supposed to be headed for West Virginia now, a vision of blue-green hills and an inviting open road tantalizing his feverish brain.
“I’m not going to kill you, Malachi. But I am going to leave you. Right where you left Wesley Hardin. You’re in a steam drum, Malachi. In a boiler. In a ship. In an empty ship. Nobody ever comes down here anymore, Malachi. I’m going to bolt up the cover, and I’m going to remount the lagging pad, and you are going to com template your sins for a week or so until you dry up and turn to dust.”
And then there was darkenss as something big and heavy shut out the light back by his feet. Only this time, his muscles did work, and Malachi began to scream.
dan pulled the Suburban up in front of the Forge Building and parked in one of the spots reserved for senior officers. There were thin patches of fog drifting through the gun park out in front of the building. The downstairs windows of the building were all dark, except for the ground-floor entrance hall and a single office suite at the far-left end. Grace could see that there were many more lights on up on the second floor.
“Somebody’s working late,” Dan said, peering through the windshield.
“The Navy JAG Appeals Division is on the ground floor,” she said. “They never work late. NIS has the entire second floor on this end and a piece of the ground floor at that end, where the lights are. That’s the admiral’s conference room.” Robby was right, she thought.
Something’s going on.
Dan reached for his hat in the backseat.
“You going to put that brace back on?” Grace asked.
“Hell with it,” he replied. “Neck’s feeling a little better now.”
Probably because of the brace, she thought, but she held her tongue. As they got out of the car, an elderly Federal Protective Service security guard with a familiar face came through the glass doors of the reception area, carrying a lunch pail and his jacket. He saw Dan’s three stripes and saluted almost automatically.
“Evening, Commander,” he said. “Miss. Snow.
Haven’t seen you for a while.”
“Lots of lights on tonight, Mr. Jansen,” Grace said, remembering the man’s name at the last moment.
“What’s going on?”
“Don’t rightly know, Miss. The admiral just came back in and he looked kinda flustered.”
At that moment, Grace saw Robby Booker appear in the reception area, coming toward them. He was in his shirtsleeves as he came through the glass doors.
“Hey, Miss. Snow. They doin’ some serious flappin’ around in there.
What’s going’ down, anyway?”
“Hi, Robby, you’ll—” Grace began, but she stopped when Dan yelled out a loud
“Hey!” As she turned around, she thought she saw a figure sprinting across the end of the gun park and disappearing behind the chapel building. Dan had whirled around and was running down the steps, headed for the street.
“Son of a bitch!” he was yelling. “Grace, I’m going after him. Get the cops. Tell ‘em to find us. And call Vann. Get him down here!” And then he was gone, running down the street in the direction of the industrial area, his hat flying off his head.
“Miss.!” the guard said. “What’s going’ on?”
“I don’t know,” she said, thoroughly confused.
Whom had Dan seen? Why would he run after him like that? Oh hell, was it Rennselaer? Having been warned by the VCNO’s office, the EA was running for it. My God, Dan had been right. She turned to the security guard.
“Can you call Yard Security? That man he’s chasing is probably armed and is definitely dangerous.”
“I can, but we gotta go upstairs. But what—Who—”
“I don’t have time to explain. Let’s get upstairs.
Robby, I have to make a call.”
The three of them bolted through the entrance doors and then double-timed it upstairs to the NIS reception area, the old man bringing up the rear, his lunch pail clanking against the railing. The lone desk guard, a very large woman, rose out of her chair when they burst into the NIS reception area.
“Hey,” she began.
“Call Central,” shouted the old man from the top of the stairs. “Get some units down to the industrial area.
Armed intruder, Navy officer in pursuit. Go!”
Grace grabbed the extension phone as the desk guard got on the radio.
She pushed 81 to get an outside line while fishing in her purse for Vann’s card. She found it and dialed the number. C’mon, c’mon, be there.
Booker stood there, obviously dying to know what the hell was going on.
The phone rang over in Washington, but no one answered. She hung up after ten rings and banged the phone down in frustration. Now what?
The desk guard had made the emergency call but was now obviously trying to answer the dispatcher’s question about what was going on. She looked up at Grace, but Grace wasn’t seeing her, because there, in the flesh, coming down the hall, was the executive assistant to the director of the NIS, Capt. Rennselaer. She backed away from the desk in shock. Then who the hell was Dan chasing? Oh God, it had to be that man Ward, Malachi Ward. The bastard who had tortured her and burned her house down. What the hell was he doing down here in the Navy Yard? Robby had said the EA had been meeting someone. Ward had been meeting with Rennselaer!
And Dan was running after him, unarmed. She whirled around and grabbed the old man’s gun out of his holster and, bolting through the glass doors, ran back down the stairs, the guard’s protests ringing in her ears.
dan ran down the block, ducking between the chapel and the Forge Building. Each time his feet touched the ground, a jolt of pain whipped through his neck, but otherwise, running came naturally enough. He unbuttoned his jacket as he slid around the corner of the Forge Building and stopped. The street was poorly lighted, with only a single streetlight positioned ten feet from where he was standing. On one side of
the street, to his right, was the end of the Forge Building, and one block down was the darkened end facade of the Quadrangle Building. On his left was the looming brick wall of the abandoned gun factory, the Turret Lathe
Building. He eased out into the middle of the street, waiting to see if his quarry would move. Him, of all god damned people. Then there was a wink of red light down at the corner of the Turret Lathe Building, followed by a cracking sound and something lethal slashing the air near his head. He jumped across the street and flattened himself against the Turret Lathe Building’s wall. There was another red wink, and this time, the bullet tugged at his pants leg before ricocheting off the brick wall and shattering a window in the chapel.
Shit! The streetlight! He was perfectly illuminated.
He scrambled back across the street, looking for a place to hide, but there was nowhere to go. He saw what looked like an arm move down at the corner of the Turret Lathe Building, and he hit the deck as another round cracked the night air, followed by more ricocheting sounds.
Small-caliber weapon. His neck blazed in pain again. Then he heard a siren in the distance.
The arm was gone as Dan looked up from his sprawled position in the street. He got up and headed down the street, zigzagging like a broken field runner, getting away from the damned streetlight. He kept his eyes focused on the corner of the Turret Lathe Building, but there was no further movement. He wished to hell he had a gun. The siren was getting louder; now it sounded like two sirens.
He stopped twenty feet from the corner and crouched down beside the minimal shelter of a fire hydrant.
He felt as if he was in a concrete canyon, with the massive wall of the gun factory on one side and the blank brick expanse of the Quadrangle Building on the other. Around the corner, he could just see the nose of a white pickup truck juttting out from behind a loading dock. White pickup. Why was that important? He couldn’t remember. He wanted to get around that corner, but what would be waiting for him when he did?
He decided he had to—he was too exposed out here in the street, and his quarry could be getting clean away down the street that met the one he was on in a T junction.
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