by Mike Lawson
The driver merged onto the George Washington Memorial Parkway and five minutes later took the exit for the Columbia Island Marina. The marina was at the southeastern end of Lady Bird Johnson Park and bounded on one side by the George Washington Parkway and on the other side by a small tributary off the Potomac called the Boundary Channel. The Boundary Channel was the path the boats took from the marina to enter the main section of the river. DeMarco could see why Li Mei had picked this place to meet Emma: it was only fifteen minutes from downtown D.C. but at ten p.m. the marina was closed to the public and was dark and deserted— and the Potomac made for a nice place to toss a body if one were so inclined.
They drove down a short access road and into a large parking lot. At the end of the parking lot was a building containing a snack bar and offices for the people who operated the marina. On the left side of the parking lot was an area suitable for sunbathing and picnicking, planted with grass and small shrubs and trees. In the center of this grassy section was a public restroom, a low brick structure. On the right side of the parking lot was the Boundary Channel, and seven or eight piers, each about sixty yards in length, jutted out into the channel. There were a couple hundred powerboats docked at the piers. The driver drove to the end of the parking lot then turned the car around so it faced the access road. The marina concession stand and offices were now behind the car, about fifty yards away.
They pulled DeMarco from the backseat, then Li Mei spoke to the three gangsters for a couple of minutes in Chinese. As she talked, one of the men took weapons from the trunk of the car. The weapons were identical, as if the gang had stolen a crate of them from an armory or a gun shop. They were stubby-looking guns, machine guns DeMarco thought, something like Uzis. When Li Mei finished talking, the men walked off into the darkness, one in the direction of the picnic area, and one toward the marina offices so he’d be protecting Li Mei from the rear. The third man walked down the pier that was closest to Li Mei, and as he walked he broke the lightbulbs illuminating the pier.
The next thing DeMarco heard was the sound of wood ripping— as if someone was prying open a door or hatch cover with a crowbar. The sound came from the now unlighted pier. A moment later he heard diesel engines— the burbling, low-throated, rumble of big, twin inboards. It appeared that Li Mei’s man on the pier had broken into a boat and hot-wired it. The engines were soon turned off and the marina was quiet again.
Why did Li Mei need a boat?
Once her men were in position, Li Mei pulled out a cell phone and called Emma at the number DeMarco had given her. Her dark eyes were feral, and like a cat’s seemed to glow in the dark.
“Meet me at the Columbia Island Marina,” she said into the phone. “Do you know where it is?”
There was silence as Emma responded.
Li Mei could have called Emma from Chinatown but DeMarco realized she wanted to make sure that Emma didn’t get to the rendezvous ahead of her.
“How long will it take you to get here?” Li Mei said.
Another pause. “An hour! Bullshit!”
Another pause. “Okay, one hour, no more. If you’re late, I’ll kill your friend. If you’re not alone, I’ll kill your friend. If the police show up instead of you, I’ll kill your friend.”
Jesus. Was there some scenario where he didn’t get killed?
Li Mei closed the cell phone and said to DeMarco, “You better hope she does what I told her. Now go stand there, at the front of the car.”
Li Mei called out in Chinese. DeMarco was guessing she was telling her companions that Emma would be a while.
DeMarco leaned his butt against the hood of Li Mei’s car, his hands still taped behind his back. He could hear the Potomac River— which made him think of shrouded bodies being carried out to sea by current and tide.
* * *
CARMODY AND EMMA stopped on the parkway, a hundred yards before the marina exit. It had only taken her ten minutes to get there, driving at breakneck speed from DeMarco’s Georgetown home. Her meeting with Li Mei was scheduled to start in fifty minutes.
Carmody opened the gym bag lying at his feet. He pulled a tube of camouflage paint from the bag, streaked his face and hands with the paint, and put on a black watch cap. All his clothes were black: black cap, black turtleneck sweater, black jeans, black boots. The next thing he took from the bag was a knife in a scabbard; he strapped the scabbard to his right leg with Velcro straps. After the knife came a silencer, which he screwed onto the barrel of the .22 pistol he had been holding. Then he took another pistol from the bag, a backup gun. He shoved the backup weapon into his belt behind his back. He executed the move so quickly that Emma wasn’t able to identify the make of the second weapon. The last item Carmody took from his gym bag was a pair of night-vision goggles.
“Just like the good old days, isn’t it, Carmody?” Emma said.
“No,” he said. “Back then I did this for my country.” There was an ache in his voice that surprised Emma.
“I need an hour,” Carmody said.
“I’m supposed to meet her in forty-five minutes,” Emma said. “She said she’d kill Joe if I wasn’t on time.”
“I need at least an hour,” Carmody repeated.
“That’s going to make her nervous. She’s liable to bolt.”
“Well, you better hope she doesn’t.”
Carmody reached up and pressed a switch so the dome light in Emma’s car wouldn’t come on when he opened the door. He placed his hand on the door handle but didn’t open the door. “By the way,” he said, “in case I don’t get out of this alive and you do, tell the navy that the Chinese didn’t get anything good from me.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The basic technology on navy nuclear ships is pretty old at this point. The first Nimitz class carrier was built in 1972. The first Trident, in ’79. The Chinese have had a lot of time to collect intelligence on our ships and there probably wasn’t much that I gave them that they didn’t have already. But when I got the CDs from the shipyard I went through them before I passed them on to Li Mei. I deleted the new stuff, particularly any mods made in the last four or five years. And I changed a lot of information in the manuals so some of what they got wasn’t accurate. Anyway, the Chinese got a lot of stuff, maybe some stuff they never had before, but none of the recent modifications to propulsion plants or weapons systems. On the operational side, I gave them absolutely nothing of any value. They would have learned more from reading press releases. Tell the navy it was the best I could do and still…and still do what I needed to do.”
“But why did you do it, Carmody? It wasn’t for money, was it?”
Carmody ignored her question and opened his door. “If you want to get out of this alive, give me an hour,” he said.
He was stepping from the car when Emma said, “The bottle rockets.”
“What?” Carmody said.
“That stuff in the box we found in your house was for a kid. It was for your kid, wasn’t it, Carmody?”
Carmody looked into Emma’s eyes for a minute but he didn’t answer her question. He shut the car door quietly and walked into the night.
* * *
“WHERE THE HELL is she?” Li Mei said.
“She’ll be here,” DeMarco said.
“She’s ten minutes late.”
“Where was she coming from?” DeMarco asked.
“She said Manassas. But she was probably lying.”
“She wasn’t lying; that’s where she went after you tried to kill her at the club. It would take at least an hour to get here from Manassas because they’re doing construction on Route 66. That would have slowed her down, even at this time of night.”
That was a lie, about the construction. DeMarco didn’t know why it was taking Emma so long to get to the marina but she— or Carmody— had to have a reason. But Li Mei didn’t look satisfied by DeMarco’s explanation. She was agitated, probably trying to figure out what sort of trap Emma was setting. He wondered how long it
would be before she decided to kill DeMarco and abandon the rendezvous.
Time passed with agonizing slowness, and while the minutes crept by DeMarco wished for a number of things. He wished that he could smoke a cigarette; at this point lung cancer was the least of his worries. He wished that he had called his mother recently and told her that he loved her. He wished that Diane Carlucci hadn’t been caught up in all this. He wished that he had taken that trip to Europe rather than just talking about it all these years. He wished that his marriage had lasted and that he had a kid. He wished. He wished. He wished.
A car turned onto the access road leading down to the marina. The car stopped for a moment at the head of the parking lot, then proceeded forward slowly, stopping again about a hundred feet from Li Mei’s vehicle. It was Emma’s Mercedes and her headlights were blinding DeMarco.
* * *
CARMODY LAY ON the ground and peered through the night-vision goggles at the piers where the boats were moored. The boats— their hulls, their cabins— were all fluorescent green.
He didn’t know how many people Li Mei had brought with her, but he was guessing three. The car that had transported Li Mei and DeMarco to the marina had bucket seats in the front and wouldn’t comfortably hold more than five. This was assuming, of course, that another car hadn’t transported more men and then parked somewhere else.
So far he’d found two of Li Mei’s men. He found the first one almost immediately, hidden near the public restroom on the left side of the parking lot. He had guessed that a second man would be hidden near the marina office or snack bar, using the buildings for cover. The third guy would be on one of the piers behind Li Mei; that was the only place he could be.
It had taken him almost half an hour to get to the second man. He had to slither on his belly, using the sparse foliage around the marina for cover, and that took time. And to get to the marina office he had to pass within fifty yards of Li Mei’s car. If Li Mei had turned to look in his direction while he was crawling she might have seen him. But she didn’t turn.
He had just shot the second man in the back; he’d been hiding behind a Dumpster near the snack bar. Carmody studied the piers for a few minutes searching for the third man. He was most likely on the pier closest to Li Mei, but Carmody couldn’t see him. He turned his head to look at Li Mei and DeMarco. DeMarco was still standing at the front of Li Mei’s car, his butt resting against the hood. His hands were behind his back, and Carmody assumed they were tied or handcuffed. Li Mei was behind DeMarco, on his right-hand side, holding a pistol in her hand.
Carmody looked at his watch. Emma would be here any moment. To get the third man he had to search the piers and to do this he would have to go into the water. He didn’t think there was time to get the third man before Emma arrived. He crawled to the river’s edge.
Just before he entered the water he saw headlights at the top of the access road.
* * *
EMMA CHECKED HER watch. It was time. She turned the key in the ignition and switched on her headlights and pulled back onto the parkway. She exited at the marina access road and drove to the head of the parking lot. At the other end of the parking lot she could see a car and a man standing in front of the car. She assumed the man was DeMarco. She drove slowly through the empty parking lot and stopped a hundred feet from Li Mei’s car. DeMarco was now clearly visible in her headlights and the expression on his face was grim. Grim and angry, but not afraid.
She couldn’t see Li Mei.
Emma slouched down so her head was partially hidden by the steering wheel, then she opened the driver’s side window and called out, “Li Mei, let Joe go. Let him walk up to the parkway. When he’s out of sight, I’ll get out of the car and we can talk.”
Li Mei laughed, the sound coming from someplace in the darkness off to DeMarco’s left. Li Mei must have moved as soon as she saw Emma’s car start down the access road.
“And after he leaves, he calls the FBI,” Li Mei said.
“No. As Joe told you, if I wanted you caught, the FBI would have arrested you in Chinatown. Or they would have been here by now. I just want to talk.”
“About what?”
“Let Joe go, Li Mei. If you don’t, I’ll back this car up, block the access road, and call for help. Lots of help.”
“You move your car and I’ll kill him.”
“But you won’t get me. Now let him go.”
DeMarco was thinking that Emma didn’t realize that Li Mei had people hidden nearby. If she tried to move her car, the Chinese guys would shred her tires with their damn Uzis. And if Li Mei let him go to appease Emma, her men would certainly kill him before he reached the parkway. Li Mei wouldn’t allow DeMarco to roam the parkway, trying to flag down a cop.
Emma— and DeMarco— waited for Li Mei’s answer. She finally spoke, her voice now coming from a place on DeMarco’s right. She was moving constantly so Emma couldn’t be sure of her position.
“Go on, you,” Li Mei said to DeMarco. “You can go.”
DeMarco didn’t move. Where was Carmody?
“What are you waiting for?” Li Mei said. “Move.”
DeMarco still didn’t budge. He couldn’t help Emma— unarmed and with his hands taped behind his back— and if he walked away, one of Li Mei’s people would come out of the dark and knife him as soon as he was out of sight. He needed a plan.
“Joe!” Emma said. “Just walk up to the parkway and keep walking. Don’t call anyone. I’ll be all right.”
DeMarco thought Emma sounded surprisingly confident— but then she always sounded confident. Not knowing what else to do, DeMarco walked toward her car. As he neared her car he said quietly, “She has three guys with her. They’ve got machine guns.”
“Don’t stop,” Li Mei yelled from the darkness.
“Keep walking, Joe,” Emma said.
“Where’s Carm—”
“Move, Joe!” Emma said.
Emma waited until DeMarco’s figure disappeared into the darkness behind her, then she took a breath and stepped from her car. She had had a good life, an incredible life in many ways. If it all ended this night, here by the Potomac, in sight of the Pentagon, so be it. There were worse places to die.
She walked slowly toward Li Mei, her hands in the air to show she wasn’t armed. She was wearing a tight-fitting pullover and jeans. She did a slow turn to show Li Mei she didn’t have a gun behind her back.
“Turn off your headlights,” Li Mei said. “A cop might see the car from the parkway and come down here. You don’t want to be responsible for any more dead cops, do you?”
“No,” Emma said, “you’ve killed enough people.” She walked back to her car and reached through the open window to shut off the lights then turned and continued toward the sound of Li Mei’s voice. She had yet to see Li Mei.
She had walked fifty paces when Li Mei said, “Stop.”
Emma did.
“I know if I raise my head right now, I’ll be shot,” Li Mei said. “You have a sniper out there somewhere, don’t you?”
“No,” Emma said. “I came alone like I said I would.”
Li Mei laughed. “You think I’d trust you?”
There was nothing to say to that.
“Why did you want this meeting?” Li Mei said. “Why didn’t you have me arrested in Chinatown?”
Where was Carmody? Emma was running out of things to say.
“Because I don’t want anyone else to die because of me, and if I had sent the FBI to Chinatown, a lot of people would have died. I came here to make you an offer, an offer to live. If you give up Carmody’s and Washburn’s files, and agree to cooperate with our intelligence agencies, in a few years you’ll be free, free to live wherever you want, free to begin a new life.”
Emma had no authority to make such a deal but that didn’t really matter. She was just stalling.
Where are you, Carmody?
Li Mei didn’t answer for several seconds. Then she stood up and walked toward Emma, a pistol in h
er hand.
“You’re a fool to think I’d accept such an offer,” Li Mei said. “And you were an even bigger fool to come here tonight.”
Emma didn’t say anything. She’d run out of words.
“There’s a trawler waiting off Cape Henry,” Li Mei said. “My people still want what’s inside your head. So you’re going to take a cruise. On your way to China, you’ll be interrogated and tortured and probably raped. When you reach China you’ll be interrogated and tortured some more. You’ll betray your country and you’ll die alone, debased and humiliated. That will make up for Hawaii.”