The second perimeter

by Mike Lawson

  “What are we doing at the sub base?” Mulherin asked.

  “Come on,” DeMarco said and exited his car and walked toward the building. Mulherin hesitated a moment, then followed. They entered the building, walked down a narrow, brightly lit hallway until they came to an open door. The room contained a small wooden table and two wooden chairs. The only thing on the cinder-block walls of the room was a government-issue clock. Emma was sitting alone at the table, and on the table was a pitcher of water, two glasses, and a tape recorder.

  “Hello, Mr. Mulherin,” Emma said.

  “Am I under arrest?” Mulherin asked.

  “No,” Emma said, “you’re a material witness under protective custody.”

  “I want a lawyer,” Mulherin said.

  “What happened?” Emma said to DeMarco, ignoring Mulherin’s demand. He told her how the men, both Asians, had shot up Mulherin’s car, nearly killing him. “If I hadn’t been following him, they would have nailed his ass,” DeMarco said.

  “I want a lawyer,” Mulherin said again.

  “No,” Emma said. “A lawyer is not an option available to you. Either you tell me what you’ve been doing or we’ll take you back to your house where you’ll most likely be killed. What’s it going to be?”

  Mulherin hesitated. He must have felt something on his face because he reached up at that moment and touched his cheek. There was a small cut on his cheek that was bleeding slightly; the cut had been caused by glass fragments from the bullet that had struck his front windshield. Mulherin looked in wonder at the blood on his fingertips then sat down at the table.

  “Where’s the restroom?” DeMarco asked.

  “Down the hall,” Emma said in an irritated tone.

  Like she never had to pee, DeMarco was thinking.

  DeMarco left the interrogation room and walked down a narrow hallway. As he passed one room, he heard people talking and pushed open the door. There were two men in the room, one seated behind a desk, one in a chair in front of the desk. Both men had their feet up on the desk and were drinking Cokes. It was the two men who had tried to kill Mulherin.

  “You motherfuckers!” DeMarco said.

  The two men started laughing.

  “You wanna Coke?” one of the men said. “Come on, have a Coke.”

  The two men had earlier identified themselves as Jim and Tom Wang, the Wang brothers. DeMarco assumed their names were not Wang and that they weren’t brothers. Fucking spies all had a weird sense of humor. Neither of the men sounded Asian; they spoke as if they had been raised in California or some other part of the United States that didn’t imprint an identifiable accent on its citizens.

  “No, I don’t wanna damn Coke. I wanna know if you’re nuts!”

  “Hey,” Jim Wang said, “Emma said to make it look good.”

  “That one shot,” DeMarco said, “the one you put through the windshield? It missed my head by about two fuckin’ inches!”

  “No it didn’t,” the other Wang said. “I missed you by a foot. It was an easy shot. I was nowhere close to hitting you.”

  “My ass, you weren’t,” DeMarco said, which just made the Wangs laugh some more. These were two sadistic bastards, DeMarco thought.

  “And you shot the shit out of my car,” DeMarco said. “It’s a rental, goddamnit, and I didn’t get the insurance.”

  “You didn’t get the insurance?” Tom Wang said. “Oh, man, that’s gonna cost you. Maybe your own insurance will cover it.”

  “Bullet holes! You think my insurance covers fuckin’ bullet holes in rental cars?”

  This caused the Wangs to go into convulsions.

  Emma was guessing that Carmody was most likely working for the Chinese. It could have been somebody else— Russians, maybe Iranians or North Koreans, or even the Indians— but Emma figured the best bet was the Chinese. The Russians, these days, were in the midst of such political and economic chaos that they were having a hard time just keeping their fleet afloat, whereas the Chinese were building up their fleet, determined to become a real naval power. And thus the Wang brothers, two Chinese Americans.

  “Who are they?” DeMarco had asked when he had been introduced to the Wangs. “Military? FBI? Who?”

  “Military. Guys from my old outfit,” Emma had said.

  “I thought your old outfit wasn’t going to provide any manpower.”

  “They weren’t, so I called somebody higher up the food chain than Bill Smith, somebody who owes me.”

  DeMarco wondered if Emma had blackmailed one of her ex-bosses. Probably.

  “But I was told,” Emma had said, “that if this didn’t pan out, we wouldn’t be getting any more help.”

  After cursing the Wangs one last time, DeMarco visited the restroom and then returned to the room where Emma was questioning Mulherin. Mulherin was still seated at the table, looking down at it. DeMarco had heard the term “mulish” before, but had never seen an expression on a man’s face that so aptly met that description.

  Emma, arms crossed over her chest, sat looking at Mulherin, her blue eyes chips of ice. She didn’t look any happier than Mulherin. She glanced up at DeMarco when he entered the room.

  “Mr. Mulherin,” Emma said to DeMarco, “insists that he and his friends have been doing nothing illegal and that he has no idea why anyone would want to kill him. I’ve explained to Mr. Mulherin— repeatedly— that his control has decided to wrap up their little operation, and that includes getting rid of loose ends like him. Mr. Mulherin, however, lives in some sort of fantasy world. He thinks he’s going to go back home and this will all be over, like it never happened, like it was some sort of bad dream. Mr. Mulherin is dumber than a rock.”

  Mulherin didn’t even look up when Emma insulted him.

  “Mulherin,” DeMarco said, “who do you think those guys were? Carjackers with silenced weapons?”

  “I wanna go,” Mulherin said.

  “I give up,” Emma said. “Joe, take this fool back to his house. Drop him off right at his front door and leave him there.”

  “Hey, wait a minute!” Mulherin said. “Maybe you could take me to…uh…how ’bout the ferry terminal?”

  “No,” Emma said. “You are going home and you are on your own. Joe, after you get rid of him, meet me back at the motel.” Emma rose from her chair and walked from the room.

  On the drive back to his house, Mulherin sat in the passenger seat staring down into his lap. DeMarco could guess what was going through his mind. Could he trust Carmody and Norton? What would he do when he got home? Where would he run to?

  When they reached Mulherin’s house, Mulherin looked around, wild-eyed.

  “What if they’re waiting for me in my house?” Mulherin said.

  “Beat it,” DeMarco said.

  “Why can’t you just take me to the ferry terminal?” Mulherin said.

  “Because I want those guys to shoot your traitorous ass off,” DeMarco said. “Now either tell me what you’re up to or get the hell out of the car.”

  Mulherin looked over at DeMarco for a moment, small eyes begging for mercy, then he opened the car door and sprinted for his house.

  Emma’s plan had failed.

  * * *

  EMMA WAS SITTING in the motel bar at a small table that overlooked Oyster Bay. She probably saw DeMarco walk into the room but she didn’t acknowledge him. DeMarco went to the bar and asked the bartender for a beer. The bartender, his Yankee-bashing pal, had been rather cool toward him since discovering he was with Emma. DeMarco joined Emma at the table where they sat in silence for several minutes before Emma said, “I couldn’t budge the dumb shit. Maybe he thinks Carmody will protect him. Or maybe he’s just more afraid of Carmody than he is of us.”

  “So now what?” DeMarco asked.

  Emma just shook her head.

  DeMarco saw she was drinking a Manhattan instead of her usual martini; maybe that was the beverage she consumed on those rare occasions when she failed.

  “Why not try again?” DeMarco s
aid. “Right away. Mulherin’s stubborn but he’s scared. Why not have those two psychopaths you hired blow up his car or put a bunch of rifle shots through his front window?”

  “For one thing, the Wangs are going back to San Diego tonight. The agency said this was a one-shot deal. The other thing is, I don’t think it will work. Mulherin’s going to tell Carmody what happened, and Carmody is going to explain to him that hired killers wouldn’t have missed him with half a dozen shots. Carmody is going to figure out in a New York minute that this was a setup.”

  21

  The Asian woman emerged from the water and walked toward the rocky beach.

  She was wearing a black neoprene diving suit to insulate her body from the cold waters of Puget Sound. As she walked, she pulled a diver’s mask and snorkel from her head. Knee-deep in the water, she balanced on one leg at a time and removed her flippers, then walked onto the beach, oblivious to the rocks and oyster shells beneath her bare feet. She dropped the flippers, mask, and snorkel on the ground, then unhooked the tool belt on her waist and let it drop to the ground next to the rest of her gear.

  She turned in a slow circle to make sure she was alone. The windows of the closest house, half a mile away, were dark as would be expected at two a.m. She pulled the diving hood off her head and brushed her fingers through her short hair. Her hair shined in the starlight as if coated with oil. She sat down on the beach next to her gear, unzipped a watertight pocket, and took out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. She lit a cigarette, blew smoke skyward, and looked out across the water at a full moon. A hunter’s moon.

  Emma, the woman thought. After all these years. All these horrible years.

  She smiled then, her teeth white and even. She hadn’t smiled— not a real smile— in a long time. She smiled now, though, because she had a plan. She wouldn’t be humiliated again. She wouldn’t lose again.

  22

  Norton gripped the shaft of the barbless hook between his thumb and forefinger, then shook it a couple of times until the twelve-inch salmon came off the hook.

  “Damn shakers,” he said. “They’re about all that’s bitin’ out here.”

  “Yeah, but them downriggers are working slicker than shit,” Mulherin said. “Drop the lines down to one twenty, and we’ll make another pass.”

  The two men were fishing off Possession Point on the southern tip of Whidbey Island. Mulherin was at the wheel of the fishing boat, a beer in his fist, a Seattle Mariners hat on his head. He wore jeans and a T-shirt and on the T-shirt were the words: I BELIEVE IN FILLET AND RELEASE. Mulherin wore the T-shirt every time he fished and it was spotted with fish-blood stains that were impervious to detergent.

  Mulherin had caught an eight-pound silver and a twenty-pound king but Norton had yet to hook into anything of legal size. For reasons that Norton could never understand, Mulherin always caught more fish than he did even when they were fishing from the same boat at the same depth using the same bait. It really pissed him off.

  Norton put another plug-cut herring on his hook and dropped the bait to the depth Mulherin had specified. He wore fish-bloodied jeans and an old T-shirt that stretched tight over his gut. He checked the drag on his reel then walked over to the cooler and took out another beer.

  “I hope we got enough beer,” he said, sounding genuinely concerned. They had started off with a case of twenty-four cans when they left the marina at six a.m. but it looked like half their supply was gone, and it was only nine. Fuckin’ Mulherin, Norton thought, the guy drank like a fish.

  “We’ll get some more in Everett,” Mulherin said.

  “Why the hell did Carmody want us to meet him over there anyway?”

  “Who cares? It works out perfect. We fish ’til eleven, catch a buncha salmon, then head on over to Everett for a nice lunch. I’m tellin’ you, Norton, this is the life.”

  “You didn’t think it was the life last night. You were so scared you were ready to crap your pants.”

  “No I wasn’t.”

  “The hell you weren’t. Until Carmody told you what was going on, you were ready to run for fuckin’ Mexico.”

  Mulherin nodded his head. “Well you would have been scared, too, if guys had been shooting bullets at your head.” Mulherin paused, then added, “I can’t believe our own government would do something like that.”

  Norton just shook his head. Mulherin was such an idiot.

  “You all set?” Mulherin asked. He had shut off the engine while Norton was rebaiting his line.

  “Yeah,” Norton said.

  Mulherin hit the ignition button to restart the big inboard motor, but the engine didn’t catch. He hit it again; the engine still didn’t fire.

  “Son of a bitch,” Mulherin said. “Fucker sounds like it’s flooded, but it can’t be.”

  Mulherin hit the ignition button again.

  23

  Coast Guard Lieutenant Amanda Minelli was young, early twenties, and petite, no more than five foot three. And the blue coveralls she wore were a little baggy on her slender frame, making her seem even smaller. But Emma knew it would be a mistake to assume there was anything fragile about Minelli. At her rank, she probably commanded the rescue boat that went out when the wind was fifty knots and the waves thirty feet high, and rescued fishermen too dumb to heed the weather reports. Amanda Minelli likely had more courage than men three times her size. Emma was just disappointed she couldn’t tell her more.

  “What’s left of the boat is in five hundred feet of water,” Minelli said. “At that depth, it’ll be a major effort to inspect the wreckage and the chance of finding anything conclusive is pretty small.”

  “If it was a shaped charge you’ll be able to tell,” Emma said.

  “Yeah,” Minelli said, “but the debris will be spread out all over the place. And it could have been an accident. This guy, Mulherin, we talked to his neighbors. According to one of them, he was one of those incompetent do-it-yourselfers. He’d just finished installing electric downriggers on his boat and not too long ago he replaced an alternator. If he used an automotive alternator instead of a marine one, he could have blown himself up.”

  “Why’s that?” DeMarco said.

  “Because marine alternators are made with spark suppressors; automotive ones aren’t. And Mulherin’s boat used gas not diesel. Gas is more explosive than diesel. So if Mulherin had a fuel leak, even a small one, and he used a rebuilt alternator taken off some truck, he could have blown himself to kingdom come just to save a few bucks.”

  “But you are getting a dive team over here,” Emma said.

  “Yeah,” Minelli said. “Navy deep-dive guys from San Diego. They have a saturation dive suite and an ROV.”

  “An ROV?” DeMarco said.

  “A remote operating vehicle. A robot, in other words, with mechanical arms and cameras. At the depth that fishing boat is at, we’re not talking scuba diving.”

  “When will the dive team get here?” Emma asked.

  “Maybe next Thursday,” Minelli said. “They’re on some other mission, I guess.” She looked down at the paper in her hand, then back up at Emma, and said, “With the clout you seem to have, maybe you can change the navy’s priorities, but I sure as hell can’t.”

  “No,” Emma said. “Next Thursday will be fine. I’m already sure this wasn’t an accident. It would just be nice to have it confirmed.”

  “When these divers go down, can they search the boat?” DeMarco said.

  “For what?” Minelli said.

  “Anything that belongs to the U.S. Navy and looks like it might be classified,” DeMarco said.

  Minelli didn’t say anything for a minute. “I think maybe you guys oughta tell me a little more about what’s going on here,” she said.

  24

  I’ll have the blackened halibut, a Caesar salad, and half a baked potato,” Emma said.

  “We can’t sell you half a potato, ma’am,” the waiter said.

  Emma closed her eyes briefly, then said very slowly, “Then se
ll me the whole potato, but just before you bring my dinner, take half the potato off the plate. You can eat the half you don’t bring me.”

  “I can’t…Yes, ma’am,” the waiter said.