Rockets' Red Glare

by Greg Dinallo

  Andrew thought, shrugged, and shook his head in bafflement.

  “Ed?” Coughlan prodded, turning to McKendrick.

  “Beats me, Chief,” McKendrick replied.

  “Not too many ways of getting down there,” Coughlan said, thinking out loud.

  “What about the chopper?” Andrew inquired. “Maybe it crashed and sank, trapping my father inside. By the time he got out, he was a couple of hundred feet down.”

  “We thought about that,” Coughlan replied, nodding. “It’s a possibility, but the chopper would’ve busted up pretty good on impact, and if not, flotation gear would’ve kept her afloat.” He paused thoughtfully, then resumed, “Which leaves deep-sea gear—scuba, submarine, and cement booties, so to speak.”

  “What’re you getting at, Hed?” Andrew asked. “You’re confusing me.”

  “Sorry, son, not my intention,” Coughlan replied. “Just exploring ideas. I mean, anything out of the ordinary happen lately? Anything of an unusual nature come to your attention. Anything? Anything at all?”

  “I come up with a big zero on that one Chief,” McKendrick shrugged. “Nothing.”

  Coughlan swung a look to Andrew, “Drew?”

  Andrew shrugged.

  “He didn’t go riding that morning,” he replied. “Usually does.”

  Coughlan nodded, turned, and paced thoughtfully.

  Almquist returned the printout to the file.

  Andrew took advantage of their preoccupation to catch McKendrick’s eye, and mouthed—Boulton?

  McKendrick’s eyes widened as if he’d been goosed with a cattle prod, and the vein in his neck was popping. He checked his outrage and shook no sharply.

  Andrew shrugged, chastised.

  Coughlan turned back to Andrew, took his hand, and placed the Rolex in his palm.

  “Hang onto it, son,” he said.

  Andrew stared at the watch forlornly. Then he raised his eyes apprehensively to the glass partition and the shroud-covered limb beyond. It all hit him at once: the odor, the place, the circumstances, the knowledge his father was dead, that under the shroud lay a piece of him—a piece of him! His father’s arm torn from his body!

  He felt as if he’d been kicked in the groin. The indescribable hollowness spread excruciatingly through his bowels up into his abdomen. He swallowed hard, turned to a sink nearby, and vomited.

  * * * * * *

  At approximately the same time in Chappell Hill, a maintenance truck with Harris County Gas and Electric markings was bouncing over ruts in the service road that ran outside the northeast wall of the Churcher estate. The truck came through a turn and slowed to a stop next to one of the power poles that marched in an unbroken line to the horizon.

  The beam of a flashlight came from within the cab and found a marker on the pole that read, “NE263.”

  Valery Gorodin clicked off the flashlight and got out of the truck.

  Two fellow GRU operatives followed. Vanik, who had picked up Gorodin in Dallas, carried a metal toolbox.

  Gorodin climbed up behind the cab and into the bucket of the cherry picker. He activated the hydraulic controls and swung the bucket off the spine of the truck, lowering it to the ground.

  Vanik handed Gorodin the toolbox and climbed into the bucket with him. Both wore black jumpsuits and watch caps. The third—dressed in traditional lineman’s attire, hard hat, and equipment belt—went to another control panel on the truck. He would take over the operation of the bucket should it become necessary.

  The stone wall was twelve feet high. Eight inches above the top of it, an electronic surveillance beam projected horizontally between abutments.

  Gorodin maneuvered the bucket upward until it was hovering above the wall. Then he skillfully bent the arm of the cherry picker in an inverted V, maneuvering the bucket toward the ground on the opposite side. The trick was to keep the apex of the triangle—formed by the arms of the articulated boom—centered over the top of the wall. One jerky move, one over-correction and the ungainly apparatus would break the surveillance beam, sending an alarm to security central dispatch and triggering an armed response.

  Finally, the bucket settled silently onto hard-packed soil on the estate side of the wall.

  Gorodin and Vanik climbed out with their equipment. The museum entrance kiosk was far across the grounds. They moved cautiously in the darkness through a grove of aspen, and hurried toward it.

  Gorodin’s stomach butterflied pleasantly as they reached the kiosk. He had the electronic card key that he’d taken from Churcher’s wallet on the Foxtrot. He inserted it into the reader next to the elevator.

  The doors rolled open.

  The alarm system in the museum deactivated.

  Gorodin leaned into the elevator cautiously, looking for signs of surveillance devices. Satisfied the elevator was clean, as he had expected, he entered.

  Vanik followed.

  The elevator closed and descended, taking the two Soviet agents into the museum below.

  * * * * * *

  McKendrick’s Corvette screeched up the ramp in the parking garage beneath Forensic Center.

  McKendrick spun the wheel right and glanced sideways to Andrew next to him. “Feel better now?” he asked, in a sharp tone devoid of compassion.

  Andrew slumped in the low seat of the Corvette and nodded automatically.

  “Good,” McKendrick replied, “because I’m really pissed off.” The vein in his neck was popping again.

  “What?” Andrew asked, baffled.

  “You almost blew it in there!”

  The car came up onto the street.

  McKendrick flicked on the headlights, slammed the transmission into second, and turned west into Old Spanish Trail, heading for the South Loop.

  “What’re you talking about?” Andrew snapped, pushing into a more upright position.

  “Boulton? The package in the museum!” McKendrick taunted angrily. “I knew I should’ve never told you about them!”

  “Back off me,” Andrew said. “I didn’t say anything. But I probably should have.” He felt like a child unjustly accused of snitching, and squirmed in the seat.

  “No fucking way!” McKendrick exploded. “If your old man wanted anyone to know he was connected to that package, he would’ve said so! You think he told me, ‘under anonymous cover,’ just for the hell of it? He didn’t even want Boulton to know!”

  “Okay, okay, you have a point,” Andrew said defensively. “But something’s not right here, dammit! I felt it the minute he didn’t show up at the stables that morning.”

  “Shouldn’t have said that to Coughlan, either,” McKendrick shot back.

  “Why not?” Andrew asked, without sounding argumentative.

  “Cause I figure you’re right,” McKendrick replied less vociferously. “Something weird’s going on. If you’re smart, you’ll forget it. Your old man’s dead. Nothing’s going to change that.”

  “Forget it?” Andrew exclaimed. “You heard Coughlan. You know my father didn’t do any diving. That leaves subs and cement booties, and I don’t like the sound of either!”

  “Tough!” McKendrick snapped. “It was his life, he lived it his way. Whatever he was into, he knew it was hardball, that’s for sure.”

  “Come on, Ed,” Andrew pleaded. “We’ve gotta do something. We just can’t—”

  “No! I’ve gotta do something!” McKendrick interrupted angrily.

  “The package—” Andrew said flatly.

  McKendrick ignored him and downshifted.

  “Ed,” Andrew pressed.

  McKendrick tightened his lips, and stomped the gas pedal to the floor.

  The Corvette laid down a patch of rubber and took off. Its taillights left a red smear in the darkness.

  Andrew lurched backwards, pinned to the seat by the sudden acceleration.

  The car rocketed into the on-ramp of the 610 Freeway. By the time it hit the traffic lanes it was doing well over a hundred.

  * * * * * *

 
In the underground museum on the Churcher estate, Vanik was crouching in front of a storage room door, positioning a device made of precisely machined stainless steel parts over the lock.

  This door and five others—four of which Vanik had already opened—led to climate-controlled rooms where paintings not hung in the galleries were stored. The doors were arranged in a semicircle, and opened onto an atrium from which the galleries fanned out.

  Gorodin exited the adjacent storage room.

  Vanik questioned him with a look.

  Gorodin shook no, disgusted. “Not in there, either,” he replied in Russian.

  “Two more to go,” Vanik said, discouraged. “Maybe Comrade Deschin was wrong. Maybe the package is in the mansion or offices downtown?”

  “No.” Gorodin said flatly. “Minister Deschin knew Churcher for over thirty years. They were very close. He was positive something this sensitive and important to Churcher would be kept here. Get on with it. We’re wasting time,” he added impatiently.

  Vanik shrugged and returned his attention to the device that he had positioned on the door. He grasped the handle—a long, one-inch-diameter stainless dowel—and spun it. Three mechanical jaws tighted on the edges of the lock’s hardened steel faceplate. Additional turns of the handle drove a super-hardened steel drillbit into the keyhole, then gradually retracted it, tearing the lock assembly from the door.

  Vanik removed the device and set it aside. Next, he inserted a machined crank-handle into the jagged opening. He engaged the now exposed inner locking mechanism, and rolled back the four dead bolts that penetrated two inches into the metal frame on both sides of the door.

  Gorodin pulled it open, reached inside, flipped on the lights, and entered the storage room.

  Like the other storage rooms, this one was lined with parallel racks filled with canvases. A long work table with large, flat steel file drawers beneath, took up the center of the space.

  Gorodin went to the drawers, opening them bottom to top, searching as he went, and not taking the time to close them. Once certain the package of documents wasn’t in the drawers, he crossed to the racks of paintings, and began flipping through the canvases.

  In one rack, The New York School—a Rothko, a Klein, a large Pollock, two Rauschenbergs, a Warhol, and three de Koonings. In the next, Impressionists—three prize Tahitian Gauguins, two Monets, Matisse’s “Chambre Rouge,” four Lautrec lithographs, Van Gogh’s “Prison Courtyard,” and a Degas. In the third rack, Renaissance masters —a da Vinci, a Raphael, a Titian, a Giorgione, two Botticellis, four Michelangelo drawings, and a Veronese. In the fourth, a massive Courbet by itself. The fifth was filled with over a dozen Picassos. The sixth contained, Russians—three Kandinskys, a Pevsner, three Malevich sketches, and a Chagall, and then, two more Chagalls. These last two canvases were exactly the same size, and stored back-to-back in a tight-fitting clear plastic sleeve—the only works stored in this manner.

  Thus intrigued, Gorodin pulled them from the rack and carried them to the worktable.

  The flamboyant oils were two of many Chagall had painted in Russia for the Jewish Theater in 1920. At the time, he had already spent four years in Paris, returning to his homeland just prior to the Bolshevik uprisings to court his long-time fiancée. He was made commisar of art for his home city of Vitebsk, where he founded an art school. Its students, like the master who taught them, produced works diametrically opposed to the state-approved Social Realism. And in 1923, Chagall’s style was challenged by the new regime.

  “Don’t ask me why . . . a calf is visible in the cow’s belly. Let Marx, if he’s so wise, come to life and explain it to you,” Chagall replied. He and his bride left Russia soon after, never to return.

  Now, sixty-three years after Chagall painted them, GRU agent Valery Gorodin held the two masterpieces that had never been exhibited in Russia or the West. He slipped the back-to-back canvases from the plastic sleeve, and in the space between them found what he was after.

  The package was a sealed, nine-by-twelve-inch waterproof mailer. It contained six engineering drawings of the VLCC Kira. The thirty-by-forty-inch blueprints had been folded four times in each dimension and fit neatly into the mailer which was devoid of markings and return address. The typing on the plain white stick-on label read:

  J. Boulton

  2364 Fallbrook Road

  Chevy Chase, MD 20015

  Gorodin wasn’t an aficionado, but he knew Chagall was an expatriat Russian Jew. He smiled appreciatively at Churcher’s selection of a hiding place, took the package, and quickly left the storage room.

  * * * * * *

  The red Corvette swung into the short approach road that led to the Churcher estate.

  McKendrick depressed the button of the remote control unit clipped to the car’s visor.

  The ornate entrance gates rolled back.

  The Corvette rocketed between them without slowing, and accelerated up the cobbled drive. In thirty seconds the car had circled the mansion, crossed to the far side of the grounds, and nosed to a fast stop in front of the stables.

  Andrew opened the door and got out.

  McKendrick leaned across the transmission hump. “Package can’t be shipped from Texas,” he said. “I’ll be gone at least a day. Don’t talk to anybody.”

  Andrew grunted and slammed the door.

  The Corvette rocketed off into the night.

  Andrew watched for a moment. He felt isolated. The way he did as a teenager after he’d tangled with his father who would bring down a steel door in his mind, shutting him out. Andrew stuffed his hands into the pockets of his jacket, crossed to the stables, and climbed the outside staircase to his quarters above.

  Across the grounds, the Corvette came over a rise and pulled to a stop adjacent to the museum kiosk.

  McKendrick got out of the car, and walked briskly beneath the kiosk’s intricate steel-and-glass roof toward the elevator.

  He took the duplicate electronic card key from his wallet, and was about to insert it into the reader. His eyes darted to the status light. It was red, not green, indicating the elevator was in the down position—someone was in the museum. Had to be. McKendrick was turning toward the security phone on the opposite side of the kiosk when he heard the elevator door rolling open.

  Gorodin and Vanik appeared in front of him. They froze for an instant, startled by McKendrick’s presence, then bolted past him and ran into the darkness.

  McKendrick took off after them. He had no idea who they were, but he’d seen the package under Gorodin’s arm, and knew he had to get it back.

  The chase led toward the grove of aspen.

  Gorodin was in the lead, already short of breath, and hanging onto the package. He was really back now, he thought. It was typical that the task had gone so well, only to be compromised at the last moment. He envisioned Beyalev smiling snidely on learning he’d been caught, and ran even faster.

  Vanik was a few steps behind struggling with the toolbox, glancing back at their pursuer who was gaining.

  McKendrick’s massive arms and legs were churning, his chest heaving. In a burst of speed, he launched his 240 pounds through the air, diving past Vanik for Gorodin who had the package. The ground came up fast and hard as McKendrick landed just short of his target. His hands clawed at Gorodin’s ankles as they slipped from his grasp. He had stopped many touchdowns in South Bend with that kind of tackle, but that was twenty years ago and he could see what he was doing.

  Vanik got tangled in McKendrick’s legs and went down, the toolbox crashing to the ground with him.

  Both men scrambled to their feet.

  McKendrick marshalled all the power in his weight lifter’s body and fired a punch toward Vanik’s head, intending to take him out with a single devastating blow and go after Gorodin.

  Vanik put the toolbox in front of his face.

  McKendrick’s fist smashed into the steel surface. The bones in his hand shattered in a muffled crunch. He recoiled, howling in pain.


  Vanik raised the toolbox overhead, and heaved it at McKendrick. It bashed him square in the chest, knocking him to the ground.

  McKendrick shoved it aside to get up.

  Vanik dove at him, slamming a forearm into his throat and a knee into his groin as he landed.

  McKendrick gasped, his body arched against the pain. Vanik’s fingers clawed at his neck, and vise-locked around it, thumbs crushing his windpipe from both sides, brutally. McKendrick fought to tear them from his throat, but Vanik’s strong, expertly trained hands continued strangling him, and he knew he had only a few seconds of consciousness left. He expanded the powerful muscles in his neck and caught a breath, then brought his fists up explosively between Vanik’s arms, and slammed them into the underside of his jaw.

  Vanik bellowed as the tandem blows landed. The force sent him reeling backwards off McKendrick onto the ground.

  The impact on McKendrick’s broken hand sent shock waves rocketing up his arm. He got to his feet, despite the pain, and was searching the darkness for Gorodin when Vanik lunged into his legs from behind, knocking him to the ground again.

  The two men rolled, and came up grappling at each other’s clothing, fighting, clawing to get a handhold, any advantage.

  McKendrick’s right hand was useless. He exploded from down low, and blasted a left into Vanik’s stomach. The punch landed with such force, McKendrick’s fist penetrated the triangle beneath his adversary’s rib cage to the wrist.

  Vanik made a disgusting, wretching sound and doubled over in agony.

  McKendrick lunged forward, grabbed a handful of his hair, and brutally smashed a knee up into his face.

  Vanik’s head snapped backward. Blood was spurting from his nostrils and mouth. He tumbled end over end, arms and legs flailing, and landed in a lifeless heap a distance away.

  McKendrick turned to where he last saw Gorodin.

  The sharp crack of a gunshot rang out.

  McKendrick straightened suddenly, and spun to his left holding his shoulder. A burning sensation exploded across his chest. The searing pain shot up the side of his neck and out the top of his head. He staggered forward, realizing in his zeal to retrieve the package he had made a fatal error; he had never considered the men were armed, though to assume it had been drilled into him in the military and had paid off in Asian jungles. Wasn’t he the platoon leader who warned his men, “Unchecked emotion is an enemy sniper!” Hadn’t he once sternly lectured a friend who had chased a burglar instead of calling police? Didn’t he always caution others to—