Hostage Zero

by John Gilstrap

  Apparently, Fisherman’s Cove was blessed with a deepdraft marina. He never did find the bottom. Instead, he found a forest of pilings and spiderwebs of rope, which in the inky darkness felt predatory, threatening to grab him and hold him under until he drowned.

  He had no idea how long he stayed underwater or how far he swam-it felt like three slips, but how could you know? — but when the urge for a new breath hit him, it hit him hard. Harvey kicked again and pulled hard with his arms. His lungs screamed for relief, and it occurred to him in his disorientation that he could just as easily be pulling himself deeper as rising to the surface.

  The new rush of panic redoubled his need to breathe. Now.

  He kicked and pulled again, but as he saw the surface rushing to meet him, he aborted the effort, sculling madly to slow his ascent. If he exploded out of the water, he’d surrender any advantage that this swim might have bought for him.

  He slowed to an easy float, again sculling to rise as slowly as possible. Just a few inches from the surface he saw a white fiberglass hull through the murk, and he rose to meet it with his hands, then used its support to hand-walk to the surface. Of the whole ordeal, the final five inches were the worst. The pressure in his lungs and the panic in his mind screamed at him just to give up and give in. He refused.

  He broke the surface vertically, crown of his head first, then his eyes, and finally his nose and mouth. He pursed his lips to keep from exhaling with a burst of noise, gulped a new lungful of air, then took in his surroundings.

  He had, in fact, swum under two slips and past four ranks of moored boats-maybe a hundred feet, farther in the water than he’d been since basic training. He allowed himself a moment of pride.

  But Denim was still out there somewhere, armed with a gun and a plan that Harvey wanted nothing to do with. He couldn’t see him and he couldn’t hear him, but he was definitely there.

  So, what to do next? Staying right where he was appealed to him for the time being, but that was ultimately self-defeating. Silhouetted as he was against the white fiberglass, he was nowhere near as invisible as he needed to be. Sooner or later, Denim would see him, and then Harvey would have no choice but to become a victim.

  Harvey needed to get to the street. He needed witnesses-a crowd that would make it impossible for Denim to hurt him. Down here on the water, isolation worked to the attacker’s benefit. Up there, the tables turned.

  His mind conjured a memory of the long staircase that led to the street. Moving with excruciating care to remain silent, he pressed his hands against the hull to guide himself through the water toward the aft end of the boat-he figured it to be a twenty-eight footer, a speedboat-away from the dock, but toward the swim deck that he believed to be standard equipment on boats this size. Hey, if you can’t ski or go tubing off the back of a speedboat, what was the point of owning one?

  He wasn’t disappointed. Actually, it was more of a shelf than a deck, slats of imitation wood hovering no more than eight inches from the surface. He faced the trailing edge of the deck, wrapped his fist around the closest plank, and did his first chin-up in a very long while.

  As he strained to raise high enough to hook the deck with his leg, he realized for the first time that the night tasted like oil. A half-roll more and he was completely out of the water, watching the sky.

  He didn’t move. He couldn’t afford to move. As long as his pulse was the only discernable sound, he’d be vulnerable to anything. He counted to sixty, and then he counted to sixty again. After two minutes, he felt in control again. At least a little.

  Measuring every motion, Harvey gently rolled from his back to his stomach and pushed up to his haunches, where he froze again to reassess. Except for the slapping of the moored boats and the occasional sound of laughter from Jimmy’s up the street, all seemed silent. All seemed normal.

  The way things always seemed to victims in the moments before an ambush.

  Where had Denim gone? Harvey had expected to find him two slips over, peering over the side into the water, waiting for him to rise and give himself away, but now he realized that it wouldn’t make sense. Whole minutes had passed since Harvey’s headlong dive. The smart move for Denim would be to pull back to a place that allowed the best recon and allowed him to set up the ambush that Harvey had been dreading. But where?

  Careful to move only his head, Harvey scanned the marina, looking for any anomaly that might give away the presence of his enemy. But he saw nothing.

  And then he did.

  As if reading Harvey’s mind, Denim had taken a position in the middle of the very stairway that Harvey had planned to use as his escape route.

  Harvey cursed under his breath. When hunting, you wait at the spot where your prey must sooner or later go. He was screwed.

  “Stop it,” he said aloud. It was just a whisper, but the sound of his own voice startled him. “Grow a pair, pussy.” The phrase made him smile. It brought him back to a memory of Mike Brown, one of his closest friends over in The Sandbox. He could almost hear Mike speaking the words.

  Yeah, grow a pair.

  He lowered himself back below the level of the rear gunwale and copped a squat. Okay, we know what’s broken, he thought. What’s working?

  One: Denim clearly didn’t know where he was. As long as Harvey remained invisible, he continued to have options-even if he didn’t yet know what they were.

  Two: Denim had taken a defensive position, betting that Harvey would ultimately make a break for it. If Harvey waited him out, maybe time would make it all go away.

  Three: Well, he couldn’t think of a third.

  Harvey rose again for another peek, just to make sure that the status still remained quo. Sure enough, his enemy hadn’t moved. He was ready to wait-

  A steadily burning red LED light caught Harvey’s attention. He saw it through a window to the boat’s cockpit, which itself was locked up tight.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” he whispered. The boat had a burglar alarm. And why not? Sitting out here unattended, probably for weeks at a time during the slow months, you’d want to have some deterrent to keep kids from breaking in, wouldn’t you?

  Kids and homeless guys named Harvey. “Consider the pair grown,” he whispered, smile blooming.

  He pulled himself over the gunwale, grabbed the rail, and rolled on his belly over the rail onto the padded bench, and from there onto the wooden deck. It was all noisier than he wanted it to be-noisy enough that he feared he’d alerted Denim to his presence. He didn’t dare peek to see if he had.

  Instead, he started kicking the door to the boat’s cockpit. On the first blow, everything held strong. On the second, he heard something crack, and on the third, it all came apart.

  Then the alarm went off.

  Oh, my, the alarm.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Jonathan kept his stride slow and casual as he made his way up the hill to Fisherman’s Cove Police Headquarters. From the snippet he’d received over the phone from Chief Doug Kramer, there was a big-game hunter on the loose in their little town, and Jonathan was likely on the endangered species list. He’d learned a long time ago that the slower you moved, the more aware you were of your surroundings.

  As usual, his. 45 rode high on his hip, concealed by the jacket he wore specifically for that purpose, despite the withering heat.

  The police station was an unassuming place, built of brick and taking up an entire short city block. It sported two stories above ground for offices and various administrative functions, and five basement holding cells that at first glance looked like throwbacks to Inquisition torture chambers. Jonathan had visited the cells a few times over the years, and he often wondered if a night or two in there wasn’t enough in itself to put the common street criminal on the straight and narrow.

  He let himself in through the door to the street and smiled to Rachel, the civilian clerk who’d been in the job for at least twenty years. She smiled back through the bulletproof window and buzzed him in through th
e inner door.

  “Hi, Digger,” Rachel said with a cheery wave as he crossed the threshold. “I haven’t seen you in a long time.” She pointed to the far left-hand corner. “Chief Kramer’s in his office. He’s waiting for you.”

  On a different day, the station would have been empty at this hour; but on the heels of the kidnapping, the place was hopping, with starched and pressed strangers mingling among the familiar locals. Jonathan figured they had to be FBI. A few of them looked up as he entered the space, but went back to work after assessing him to be a nonthreat.

  Jonathan wove his way through the jumble of desks and chairs and rapped on Kramer’s door. He let himself in without hearing the invitation to do so. Doug held his telephone to his ear with his shoulder, but beckoned Jonathan closer. As he cleared the door, Jonathan saw that Harvey Rodriguez was in the room, too, seated in one of the folding metal seats that served as guest chairs. His hands were cuffed, and his soaked clothes stuck to his skin, but aside from that, he looked to be as comfortable as conditions would allow.

  “I’m impressed,” Jonathan said. “It didn’t take you long to get in trouble.”

  “Better in trouble than dead,” Harvey said.

  Doug hung up the phone and stood to greet Jonathan with a handshake. “So, you really do know him?”

  “He’s staying at the mansion,” Jonathan explained. “And he’s safe enough not to need the cuffs.”

  “His court records say otherwise,” Doug said. “He’s not supposed to be within two thousand feet of a children’s gathering place.”

  “He’s my guest,” Jonathan said.

  “Doesn’t change anything.”

  “Is that why you have him in custody?”

  Doug hesitated. “No.”

  Jonathan held out his hand, gesturing for the cuffs key. “Let’s take the offenses one at a time, then, okay?”

  Doug screwed up his face and cocked his head. “Since when do you have a soft spot for child molesters?”

  Harvey inhaled at that, but he didn’t say anything. This was exactly the scenario he had predicted.

  “I don’t have a soft spot for child molesters,” Jonathan said. “Which is why I’d like you to trust me on this and give me the key.”

  Doug held Jonathan’s gaze, then begrudgingly fished the tiny key out of his pocket and handed it across the desk.

  Jonathan unfastened Harvey’s hands, and handed the hardware back to the chief. “Thanks, Doug. So, why is he in custody?”

  “Well, according to Harvey, somebody’s trying to kill him. When he got cornered down on the marina, he says he broke into a boat specifically to sound the alarm and bring attention. That last part worked. One of our patrolmen happened to be less than a block away.”

  Jonathan shot an admiring look to Harvey. “Yeah?”

  Harvey shrugged and rubbed his wrists.

  “Good thinking,” Jonathan said. “And the bad guy?”

  “Poof,” Doug said. “No sign of him.”

  “Tell him the rest,” Harvey prompted. “Your guy saw my guy running away after the alarm sounded.”

  Doug confirmed with a shrug and a nod. “Absolutely true.” He pointed to one of the other metal chairs. “Have a seat, Dig. I’ve learned over the years that shit like this doesn’t happen in this town unless your DNA is on it somewhere. Tell Uncle Dougie what’s going on.”

  Jonathan sat, crossed his legs, and tried his best to look relaxed as he scoured his mind for a way to skirt what he knew was coming. “Doug, you know we’ve been friends for a long time-”

  The chief laughed. “Oh, God,” he said. “When you start down the friendship road, nothing good ever follows.”

  Jonathan remained serious. “We’ve always had an understanding about my business. You don’t ask much, and I don’t offer much.”

  Doug turned serious, too. “That was before people started shooting the place up and kidnapping children. That was before I had reporters climbing up my ass twenty-four hours a day and the FBI camped out in my squad room. Funny how stuff changes.”

  “You have every reason to be upset,” Jonathan said. “If I were in your position-”

  Doug held up his hand. “Save it. I don’t need to be patronized or commiserated with. I need information, and I believe that you have it. I love you like a brother, my friend, but don’t think I won’t throw your ass in jail for obstruction. If that happens, I don’t know how I’ll be able to stop the leaks to the press about your little sideline business. I don’t know the details, but I know enough to make your life difficult. What I haven’t figured out yet, I’m sure that the press could stitch together in time. So, tell me, Dig. How fast do you want the pitches to come in this game of hardball?”

  Jonathan felt stunned. “You’re threatening me?”

  Doug threw his hands in the air in frustration. “What the hell else can I do? Look, I know you see Resurrection House as your pet project run by your pet charities, but the reality is, it’s in my town, and that janitor in the hospital-Alvin Stewart-is a neighbor of mine. Now, I know you’re not real keen on some of the laws of this land, but you’ve got to live by them just like everybody else. At a minimum you’ve got to share specialized information with the people who are paid to enforce them.”

  Harvey Rodriguez watched the two of them as if they were a tennis match, his head turning from one to the other.

  “You don’t want to know some of these details, Doug.”

  The chief slammed his hand down on the desk. “Don’t tell me what I don’t want to know. I’m a big boy, Digger. I’m smart enough to sift details.”

  Jonathan had never seen him like this. Of all the people he’d known over the years, Doug Kramer had always been among the most staid. It was unsettling to see him this far out of control. But he had a point. The chief had a job to do, and to the degree that his job involved protecting the children at Resurrection House, they should be in lockstep. As he made up his mind what he was going to do, he could almost hear Boxers screaming in protest. The big guy always worried that he played fast and loose with OpSec-operational security-and to tilt his hand to the chief of police, even one who’d been a friend since childhood, crossed all reasonable lines.

  Jonathan sighed. “I’ll share what I know, but not what I suspect,” he said, “but on the condition that you don’t ask me to reveal my sources. You’ll either believe me or you won’t, but I won’t discuss anything about how I came upon the details. Fair enough?”

  Kramer showed nothing. “I guess we’ll see.”

  Jonathan stacked the various elements in his mind, then decided to drop the biggest bomb first. “Jeremy Schuler is alive and well, and in hiding across the street in the mansion.”

  Doug looked like he’d been smacked. “Jesus, Digger. Do you know-”

  Jonathan cut him off. “I’m not going to be lectured, Doug. Listen or don’t listen, but don’t make any speeches, okay?”

  He waited for the nod.

  “We know that Evan Guinn was taken as leverage against upcoming testimony from his father against the old Slater crime family. That begged the question of why they took Jeremy Schuler, and we found out that he was to be murdered outright. Our friend Harvey here was able to rescue him and save his life.”

  Doug’s face remained blank as he turned to look at his former prisoner with renewed interest. Harvey smiled and waved.

  Jonathan continued. “It gets deeper. We have very good reason to believe that the mission to murder Jeremy was launched by someone in the government.”

  “Which government?”

  “The one in Washington.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Dig. Why-” He stopped himself and retreated from Jonathan’s glare.

  “Like I said, I’m only telling you what we know to be fact. Once we found out that important people were after the boy, we thought it best to hide him. We kept it a secret on the off chance that the bad guys don’t know that they missed, and we didn’t want the press telling everyone that
there was still a viable target.”

  Doug sat back heavily in his chair and rubbed his forehead. “Jesus, Dig. Do you know how many people are out there looking for that boy?”

  “I hope it’s a cast of thousands and getting bigger by the minute. The more they’re committed to finding him and his kidnappers, the less likely they’ll find him across the street.”

  Doug stewed on that for a couple of seconds and then laughed. “Goddamn, you are a piece of work. So what’s with the guys who are chasing you, Mr. Rodriguez?”

  Harvey started with a deer-in-the-headlights stare, then deferred to Jonathan with an upturned palm. “He’s doing just fine. I think I’ll let him talk about that.”

  Jonathan squirmed in his chair and cleared his throat. “That gets close to revealing sources,” he said. “I believe that the bad guys might be missing a couple of their companions.”

  “Missing?”

  “Move on, Doug. We’re not going there.”

  The chief conceded. What choice did he have? “So now I guess all you have to do is find the missing boy and bring him home.” He’d meant it as a joke, but when he saw Jonathan’s expression, the shock returned to his face. “Holy shit. You know where he is?”

  Jonathan shrugged. “More or less,” he said.

  “Where?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “Goddammit, Digger-”

  “Under orders from the FBI, I can’t tell you.”

  That took the wind out of his sails. “Our FBI? The ones out in my squad room?”

  “Our FBI, yes. But definitely not the ones in your squad room. I need you to keep all of this from them, Doug. Not a word. Lives depend on it. Including mine.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” Doug countered. “You want me to believe that the FBI is keeping secrets from itself?”

  Jonathan said nothing. Doug could believe what he wanted to, but there’d be no more details from Jonathan on the information shared by Irene Rivers.