Critical Mass

by Steve Martini

  FOURTEEN

  PADGET ISLAND, WA

  Scott Taggart stood on the dock and watched as the small boat cut a swath of white water across the San Juan Channel and toward the island. No one came to the island unless they were invited. There was no ferry service and no mail delivery. Letters were sent to the post office at Friday Harbor, a four-mile boat ride across tide-ripped waters.

  The island was less than a mile from tip to tip and only seven hundred yards at the wide point. It had been owned by a sheep farmer at the turn of the century, a place where he could raise livestock without worrying about predators. In 1927, the island’s only well ran salty, and except for a few seasonal streams, there was no other water on the island. The rancher gave it up.

  The next owners didn’t worry about water. They shipped in whatever they needed by boat and made a fortune running Canadian whiskey across the border during Prohibition. It was less than twenty nautical miles across the Strait of Georgia to the Canadian side. It was a feature that commended the island to Scott and his group.

  They had set up in the old lodge house built by a bootleg baron in the early thirties. The ground floor was constructed of stone and heavy timbers. The house overlooked the dock from the crest of the hill.

  It was guarded by men packing Barret fifty-caliber semiautomatic rifles. These were legal weapons unless converted to full-automatic. They were accurized and scoped for precision, some of them mounted on fixed tripods. Their bullets penetrated the sound barrier with a distinctive crack and struck with the impact of a small cannon shell. They could penetrate light steel armor as well as the more modern ceramic plate that was favored by the military for its light patrol boats.

  The clips for these guns each held eleven rounds. There were hundreds of clips, all loaded and stored in bunkers around the island. Each bunker had a commanding view designed to establish a cross fire against anyone attempting to land on the island.

  The committee had been here for nearly a month. It was one of the conditions that was laid down by the man who called himself Thorn. Their food was brought in on their own boat, and water was provided by a large catchment basin built in the 1980s by the island’s current owner, a wealthy Belizean who Scott figured was probably heavily invested in narco-traffic. Thorn had made the arrangements. He seemed to be well connected internationally.

  Scott watched as the boat slowed its speed and cut a wide “J” through the tranquil water of the bay. It pulled alongside the floating dock and a single occupant got out. He grabbed a bag handed to him by one of the others and started walking toward Taggart at the other end of the dock.

  They had met three times, twice in a cabin in the mountains of Idaho almost six months ago. Scott recognized the walk, like he had a ramrod up his ass. Thorn had a military bearing that was unmistakable.

  “Mr. Taggart, is it?” Eyes like an eagle, even in the half-light of dusk.

  Through the mist, Scott could see the broad outlines of his face, a kind of coercive grin under sandy-colored hair. Thorn’s military training came from South Africa. Scott had learned at least that much.

  Thorn wore a neoprene dive suit, the hood folded back off of his head. As Thorn drew close, Scott could see the most distinctive characteristics of what was admittedly a handsome face: deep-set piercing green eyes. Thorn had used many aliases over the course of his career. The most recent was the name Dean Belden.

  “I didn’t expect you to be on the reception committee. You could have sent one of the men.” Thorn climbed the ramp from the floating dock made more steep by the ebb tide, lugging the heavy bag at his side.

  “If there was bad news, I wanted to be the first to hear it,” said Scott.

  “No bad news. You worry too much. You have to learn to be more positive. Look on the bright side. How many people would have given us even odds that we’d have gotten this far? You think your federal government has any idea?”

  “You tell me.”

  “Not a clue,” said Thorn. “As we speak, they are dredging the bottom of that lake for shards of metal no bigger than this.” He held his thumb and forefinger about two inches apart, like a caliper. It was what a pound of C-4 could do when it was properly placed near a tank of high-octane aviation fuel.

  “As for the body, they’d do as well to look for the remains of the Lord Himself, all the good it will do them.”

  “Good”

  “You have to learn to calm down,” said Thorn. “You get too intense, and it can take a toll on the ticker. Learn to savor the moment.”

  “I’ll savor the moment when we’re done,” said Taggart.

  “Oh no. You have to learn to take pleasure from each step along the way. For the time being, take consolation in the fact that the only thing worse than being chased by your government is working for it.”

  “How’s that?” They started walking toward the house.

  “Right now all those civil servants are up to their government service honkers in cold water looking for things that the fish ate two hours ago.”

  Scott couldn’t help but smile. There was something about Thorn, a certain affable gleam to his deadly edge.

  “Now, tell me about the accommodations,” he asked. “I hope there’s some good showers. I could dearly use one.”

  “Good showers. As for the place, I’m hoping we won’t have to be here that much longer.”

  “Like I said, patience.” Thorn stretched his back as he walked and groaned a little. “I’m getting too old for this. The ride was a little choppy. Hard on the low back and kidneys.”

  “We would have sent a bigger boat, but we didn’t want to draw attention.”

  “Exactly right.” Thorn stopped, took out a pack of cigarettes, and offered one to Scott.

  “No, thanks.”

  He lit up and took a deep drag while he surveyed what he could see. “How many men have you got?”

  “Twenty-eight. Enough for around-the-clock shifts. Food and water for eighteen days. That’s what you said, isn’t it? Eighteen days?”

  “That’s what I said.” He flicked a little hot ash onto the dock. “Your people, you haven’t told them anything?”

  “They know something’s up. They don’t know what.”

  “Let’s keep it that way.”

  “They’re all handpicked,” said Taggart. “Kept in the dark as to their destination until they arrived on the island. So their families don’t know where they are. Only two of them are allowed off the island. I’ll vouch for both.”

  “Yes, you will.” Thorn looked at him. “With your life if you are wrong.”

  Scott didn’t answer him.

  “We did everything exactly the way you told us. We brought them in from different groups around the country. They are the cream. All have prior military training. Half of them have seen combat in the Gulf War, four of them in Panama. One is a former Navy SEAL. We checked them out. None of them have been members of their units for less than two years. They are all committed. They will fight. If necessary they will lay down their lives.”

  “Well, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”

  Scott guessed that Thorn looked down his nose at these men. Thorn was a professional soldier, a hired mercenary with an obvious history of combat under his belt. Unless Scott was wrong, most of it paid for by the highest bidder. He came with the ordinance, the Moscow connection. If Scott and his group wanted the device, there was one condition: Thorn came with it. The sellers couldn’t take a chance that some foreign government would trace it back to them. The cost in reprisal would be too severe. Scott had anticipated someone with a thick Russian accent. Thorn had none. His English was perfect, clipped and precise.

  He had a number of aliases and could be contacted only through a mail drop in Ontario, Canada. Even that was a forwarding address. Where he lived no one knew for sure. But he apparently lived well, if his fees were any indication.

  “They will fight.”

  “Hmm.” Thorn looked at him. “Oh, I’m sure they
would if necessary.” He didn’t seem entirely convinced. It wasn’t their bravery he was concerned with. It was their organization, and the assumption by Taggart that his ground had not already been penetrated by the government. The FBI had written the book on undercover ops. They had infiltrated the Mafia with its culture of omerta—silence or death. An institution as old as the Borgias, in which blood kinship was the key to acceptance, had been riddled like swiss cheese in less than a decade. They would have done it sooner except that J. Edgar Hoover had been on such friendly terms at the racetracks with some of the bosses. Thorn assumed that Taggart’s organization was already compromised. He would operate on that basis. None of them would know what he was doing at any given time.

  “You’ve said nothing to any of your people?” he asked.

  “Not a word.”

  “Reduced nothing to writing?”

  “No.”

  “Good. There is no need for them to know what we are about. Their job is to maintain security on the island, simple as that. Yours is to wire the funds in the agreed-upon amounts at the times stated, into the properly numbered accounts. If that happens, everything will go smoothly. The rest of the plan is mine. If you are taken by the government at any time, I reserve the right to terminate our arrangement. If the money is not wired at the times required, our arrangement is terminated, all funds paid to that point are forfeit, and the device disappears with me. Do you understand?”

  “We’ve been over all of that.”

  “Yes. We have.” Thorn took a quick survey of the area around the dock, as much as the limited light of dusk would allow.

  “Looks like you’ve got everything pretty well secured.”

  “We got it covered.”

  “I would throw up a few pine bows for a blind. Your man out on the point there.” Thorn gestured with the glow of his cigarette toward the tip of land that jutted out into the channel. It provided a sheltered bay for the dock.

  “You can see the cannon your man is carrying from a mile out. There’s no sense advertising. You don’t want some pain-in-the-ass member of the Audubon Society calling the Coast Guard to come and take a look. Bald eagles and all that.”

  “I’ll see that it’s taken care of.”

  “Good.” Thorn was smiling again. He put his arm around Scott’s shoulder. He was now in charge, and they both knew it. Scott was the ideologist, the man that other true believers would follow. He’d spent three years after Kirsten’s death in the mountains of Idaho, living alone in a cabin and making contacts with people who shared a single common interest— an abiding hatred of the federal government. Many of the people he met were racists. Scott did not encourage or participate in their rantings on this subject. There were times when he felt shame for listening and not speaking up as they lanced this boil and spread their poison.

  But as months turned into years, Scott found himself talking more and listening less. He was steeped in the history of the country, better educated than any of the men with whom he associated.

  He traveled the backcountry and spoke in barns and metal buildings, to men in dirty overalls and cotton flannel shirts with frayed sleeves. The lucky ones wore the dust of their jobs on their faces. The rest looked for work in a lumber industry now decimated by federal timber policies.

  They listened wide-eyed as Scott told them about Jefferson and the rights of man, the god-given prerogative to pursue their dreams free from the tyranny of an overbearing government. It was Jefferson who warned that “the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

  There was a moral reckoning to Scott’s words and the way he delivered them that erased any doubt as to the tightness of their cause.

  In time these men came to trust him. Trust became leadership, not because he could handle a gun, but because he spoke to their concerns, their fears for the future. They viewed themselves as the victims of a political aristocracy, a ruling class that had forgotten about its own people. Bureaucrats with lifetime tenure ran their agencies like warlords, unaccountable to anyone, including elected officials.

  Their view of the federal government was of a parent who devoured its own children. Its only real constituency was foreign governments or multinational corporations willing to pay for what was euphemistically called “political access.” Good-paying jobs were shipped to Mexico or Asia where they could be downgraded to sweatshop wages while the president made empty gestures about job training and touted the benefits of the global economy. It didn’t matter whether they were Republicans or Democrats, they all sang the same song. Scott Taggart knew the melody and could explain the lyrics.

  The two men, Taggart and Thorn, were now inextricably bound.

  Thorn stamped out his cigarette. They turned and began walking up the hill toward the house. Its windows had been blanked out by heavy drapes to prevent prying eyes with high-powered optics from observing the inhabitants or taking pictures.

  “Where’s the device?” asked Scott.

  “In a safe place.”

  “I thought we were in this together?”

  “We are.”

  “Then why the Chinese wall?”

  “Because our success does not depend on your knowing where the device is. Suffice it to say that I do. And that it will be delivered to its ultimate destination at the appointed time. That is all you need to know.”

  “And the detonation. How will you accomplish that within the stated time parameters?”

  “Again one of those worrisome details that you need not trouble yourself with.”

  “I always worry about the loose ends.”

  “I can tell,” said Thorn.

  “Like Belden Electronics.”

  “They can rummage through Mr. Belden’s affairs all they want. They won’t find a thing.”

  “What about the woman? The lawyer?”

  “She doesn’t know a thing. But just to be safe, we’re about to tie up that loose end as well.”

  Scott looked at him.

  “What do you mean?”

  “There’s no sense taking chances,” said Thorn.

  “Is that necessary?”

  “There are documents in her office that are best disposed of in the flames of a hot furnace. If we take them, she will notice. Then she will start thinking, putting two and two together.” Thorn stopped, turned, and looked directly at Scott. “You tell me. Is it necessary?”

  Taggart hesitated only an instant. “Yes. I suppose.”

  “You sound reluctant.”

  “I take no pleasure in killing innocent people. It’s why I selected the time and place.”

  “A virtue not shared by your government,” said Thorn.

  Scott looked at him and wondered. He had never told Thorn about Kirsten or how she had died. Could he know? Thorn was not the kind of man with whom you wanted to share your most intimate secrets, the things that propelled you through life and motivated your actions. Whatever inhabited that dark space behind those cold eyes left little doubt that it would use such information for its own purposes. He wondered if Thorn knew about Adam and Kirsten’s parents in Seattle. For the first time since starting down this twisting path, Scott Taggart began to question what he was doing.

  “Not to worry,” said Thorn. “The woman is not your concern. She will be taken care of.”

  “When?”

  Thorn looked at his watch.

  “Soon.”

  They walked on in silence toward the house. It troubled Scott that innocent people had to die. But there was no alternative. Scott was not a soldier, but he knew the lessons of combat. Whether the federal government knew it or not, they were now at war.

  FIFTEEN

  ROSARIO STRAIT

  Even if Joselyn wanted to cooperate with McCally and the federal probe, she had a problem. She’d told him the truth. She didn’t know anything. She searched her memory for bits and pieces of information, anything that Belden might have said in her office or on the plane. Joselyn was n
o legal virgin. She’d had enough criminal clients lie to her over the years to know that among the lies there were at times a few kernels of truth. Maybe in Belden’s lies there was some thread of information, something she might key on.

  His business was electronics, at least that’s what he had told her. Maybe the name Max Sperling was real, even if the story about him wasn’t. She would look at her files when she got back to the office. Maybe there was something in her notes.

  By the time McCally and his agent had finished with her on the dock, it was dusk. She was dirty and tired. She had been standing for hours in the chilly air. Her arm was now throbbing where the medical technician had plucked splinters and wrapped her with a heavy gauze bandage. By this hour, there were no ferries to the San Juans from Seattle. The only regular service left from Anacortes, a ninety-minute drive north by car.

  She called a cab and had the driver take her to the nearest discount store, where she bought a pair of slip-on sneakers and some socks to replace her shredded hose and broken shoe. Then she went to a car rental agency. She had no choice. She would have to pay the hefty drop-off charge on the island and bill it to Belden’s account.

  As she drove, she wondered what she would do with the rest of his retainer. How would she return the unused portion? It was the kind of thing only a lawyer would think about. But she had a business to run. She would have to find some way to wind up Belden’s corporation, to dissolve it, and to get her name off of the documents of incorporation. She thought about publishing a notice, going through the formality of searching for heirs. If McCally was right about Belden’s past, it was not likely anyone would come forward. Presumably the money, any unearned fees, would escheat to the state after a period of time.

  The concussion from the explosion had left an incessant ringing in her ears, and her body now started to feel the soreness of having landed on the hard dock after the pressure wave had knocked her off her feet. Her joints and muscles had the aching tenderness she’d experienced only once, following a minor auto accident.