Blood in the Water

by Jack Flynn

  ‘Good,’ she said.

  ‘Good?’

  ‘Yeah, good.’ She could see the confusion on his face. ‘I’d rather have you be honest with me,’ she told him. ‘Maybe I’ve got too much of my mother and my father in me, but I like the excitement, too. It’s just as much a part of me as it is of you.’

  ‘Even after the past few days?’ he asked.

  ‘The past few days were awful,’ she admitted. ‘I was afraid for my own life and the baby’s life. I knew if I made it through that and the baby survived, this was meant to be. Besides, how many girls get to have the man of their dreams come to their rescue the way you did? I’ve never wanted to change you. I just need to know that you’re not walking away from me.’

  He leaned over and kissed her passionately. ‘I’ll never walk away from you,’ he said. ‘Like I said, I love you.’

  ‘I love you, too.’ She hugged him tightly.

  Fifty-Six

  Sunday 10 February

  Javier Carpio stood before the men he’d fought with in wars that went back further in time than any of them cared to admit. They were in the deserted Chelsea warehouse. He’d laid out the plan, and they’d followed the logic, but they knew that the likelihood that they would all walk away from the mission alive was low. Still, that had been true of every military operation they’d undertaken, and yet they were still alive. Enemies and comrades had fallen in numbers that were too great to comprehend, but Javier and his close cadre were still breathing. It gave them a sense of invulnerability.

  The two Stinger missiles were laid out on the table in front of them. Only two of the men would be handling them, but they all trained with them, so that if one went down there would be another to step up and take his place.

  ‘There will be chaos,’ one of the men commented.

  Javier nodded. ‘That is what we need. Without it, there is no way that Vincente will be able to get to us.’

  ‘Our inside man is trustworthy?’

  ‘As trustworthy as a man can be who is betraying who he is supposed to be.’

  That seemed to be enough for the men. They continued to go over the plan for another half hour, and then the five soldiers left the warehouse, one at a time, staggered to avoid attracting attention.

  Javier was now alone, sitting at the table, staring at the missile launchers before him. He thought back to the time when he’d taken responsibility for his younger brother. Javier himself had only been in his teens, and yet he’d already been hardened by war. He’d taught Vincente to survive, and trained him well. His brother hadn’t spoken for more than two years after witnessing their mother’s murder, but he’d made a quick study of the art of killing. Javier wondered whether his brother would have turned out differently if he hadn’t brought him into the war. Probably. But there was nothing he could do about that now. Now all he could do was make sure Vincente didn’t spend the rest of his life in an American jail cell. He couldn’t let that happen. They would both rather be dead.

  His eyes were closed when he heard the door open behind him. At first he assumed that one of the soldiers had forgotten something. They each locked the door as they left, and only they had keys. He turned to find out which of his men had come back and why.

  T’phong Soh stood just inside the door, looking at Javier with sharp eyes. Those eyes went from Javier’s face to the Stinger missile launcher on the table. ‘I heard rumors about such weapons in Boston,’ Soh said.

  Javier looked at the launchers on the table and cursed himself for not putting them away. He looked back at Soh, staying silent.

  ‘I find it strange that you have not mentioned that you had these weapons,’ Soh continued.

  ‘Have I not?’ Javier asked, as though it could simply have been an oversight.

  ‘No, you have not,’ Soh said. He pulled his hand out of his pocket and Javier saw that he was holding a knife.

  Javier stood up. He towered over the diminutive Malaysian. He took a step toward him, his fists clenched like sledgehammers. ‘You come here with a knife as though you can threaten me?’ Javier said, the threat clear in his voice.

  ‘I am not threatening you,’ Soh said. ‘I came only to get information. What is it that you are planning? Are you going to sacrifice me and my men?’

  ‘My plans for these weapons is not your concern,’ Javier said.

  ‘No?’ Soh circled wide, holding his knife casually at his side. ‘I have also heard about the sale of military boats. The rumor is that those were sold as a package with missiles like these. I suppose that is also not my concern?’

  ‘Idle gossip should never be a concern,’ Javier said.

  ‘I will not help you if you do not tell me what you are planning. All of it,’ Soh said.

  ‘Then our agreement is off,’ Javier said. ‘And you will not have control over the shipments my people can arrange.’

  ‘And your brother will die in an American prison.’

  Javier knew it was true, and the thought enraged him. He screamed in anger and took two steps toward Soh, swinging his fist. His anger made him careless, though, and the smaller man easily ducked the blow. Javier felt the blade slide across his side. Soh moved away, out of range, and Javier put a hand to the wound. He blood ran warm over his fingers, but he could tell it was superficial.

  ‘I do not want to kill you,’ Soh said. ‘I want to help you. But I cannot do that if I do not know what the full plan is.’

  Javier weighed his options. There seemed to be few. ‘How do I know that I can trust you?’ he asked.

  ‘How do you know you cannot?’

  Javier thought about this for a moment. ‘You saw the men who were here before you came in?’ he asked.

  ‘I did.’

  ‘They have the devil in them. As I do. As my brother does. As do many of us who fought and bled together in my country. They cannot be killed. And if you betray me, they will come for you. Do you understand?’

  Soh nodded.

  ‘A frontal attack will not work. There is no way for my brother to escape – nowhere for him to go.’ He nodded toward the missiles. ‘But if the attack is violent enough, it may provide enough of a distraction. Then there might be another way.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘You will help me? No matter what? Even if it means sacrificing some of your men?’

  ‘My men are expendable,’ Soh said. ‘I will help you.’

  In the end, though, Javier knew that Soh would only help himself. If that meant advancing the Carpios’ plans, he would be all right with that. But Javier had no illusions about Soh’s self-interest. If they aligned with those of the Carpios, that was fine; if not, he would make other arrangements. ‘Then I will tell you my entire plan,’ Carpio said.

  When Carpio was finished laying out what he was intending, Soh had to admit that it made sense, and it might just work. He realized, though, that there was a piece missing. ‘There is one thing that you have not considered,’ he said to Carpio.

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘Cormack O’Connell is still alive. It is likely that he will hear rumors of this plan, and he could still ruin our efforts.’

  ‘Then he must be killed.’

  Soh shook his head. ‘He is waiting for a direct attack. He is expecting that.’

  ‘How can we keep him from causing a problem, then?’

  Soh considered the options silently for a moment. ‘There is a rumor that O’Connell has worked with the FBI in the past. A woman. We call her the Hunter. She is in charge of the efforts to disrupt our organization. Perhaps she can help us?’

  ‘Why would she?’

  ‘If she believes that she is acting to prevent your brother from escaping, she will do almost anything. We may be able to use that to occupy O’Connell and create misdirection at the same time.’

  ‘Do you think that will work?’

  Soh shrugged. ‘She is obsessed with keeping your brother in prison. If we can convince her that she will accomplish that, it may work.’
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  * * * * *

  ‘Where is he?’

  Cormack asked the question, though it wasn’t clear to whom it was directed. There were a dozen men in the room at the back of the fish market. Cicero Andolini offered the obvious answer. ‘He’s disappeared.’

  ‘He can’t just fuckin’ disappear,’ Cormack stormed. ‘He’s not a goddamned ghost.’

  ‘No, he’s not,’ Cicero agreed. ‘But he’s doing a good impression of one. We’ve got men shaking the bushes all along the waterfront, and they ain’t finding any sign of him. He’s not using any of his usual spots. I even sent one of my guys back to Fort Strong, but they must’ve cleared out of there as soon as we hit the place.’

  ‘The place in Eastie … ?’

  Cicero shook his head. ‘Picked clean. Nothing there.’

  ‘What about Suarez?’

  ‘He’s gone, too. I’ve got someone looking in on the rooming house he stays at, but he hasn’t been back there.’

  ‘What the fuck are they up to?’ Cormack wondered aloud.

  ‘One thing it doesn’t look like they’re up to,’ Cicero commented, ‘is coming after us. No one’s heard a peep. It looks like they’ve got other things on their minds.’

  ‘That’s what makes me worried. If they’re done mucking around with us, it means they’ve got something serious that they’re planning. We’ve got to find them and take them out.’

  Cicero nodded. ‘Just as soon as we figure out where they are. What do you want to do now, boss?’

  ‘We need to find a way to draw him out,’ Cormack answered.

  ‘Easy enough said,’ Cicero pointed out. ‘Who are you gonna use for bait?’

  ‘I’m the only one he’s really interested in,’ Cormack said. ‘I’m the only one he’d stick his head up for.’

  Cicero raised his eyebrows. ‘You sure you wanna do that, Boss? You know that there’s no way we can guarantee your safety. We might be able to get him, but it might be after you’re already dead.’

  ‘I know,’ Cormack said. ‘You got any better plan?’

  Fifty-Seven

  Monday 11 February

  Joshua Brooks was grateful that he wasn’t a religious man. A religious man would fear for his salvation. This wasn’t the first time he had bent the rules or advanced the interests of an individual he knew to be evil. In many ways, that was the role of a defense lawyer. He’d always been able to rationalize it. He was a necessary component of what he regarded as the greatest system of justice in the world. Defense lawyers have the duty to protect their clients, not to judge them. And Brooks knew that police and prosecutors didn’t always play by the rules either. If the system was to be truly fair, defendants needed lawyers on their side who would fight as hard as the prosecutors did. It was, he’d often told himself, a sacred trust he owed to those he represented.

  Except that now, he found himself questioning whether he’d bent the rules too far in this case. Vincente Carpio wasn’t just some drug dealer or gang kingpin trying to game the system. He was a psychopath who wanted to kill for the sake of killing – and that was difficult to justify, even for a defense lawyer.

  He’d told Javier to meet him at a rest area on the northbound side of Interstate 195. Vincente’s arraignment was only a few days away, and the younger Carpio had made clear that Brooks had to pass one last message on to Javier. Brooks had no idea what the messages meant, but he had little doubt that the information was illicit, and probably put people in danger.

  He saw Javier parked in a spot at the far end of the parking lot at the rest area. He pulled alongside and rolled down his window. The cold invaded the car.

  ‘Your brother sends his greetings,’ he said after Javier had rolled down his window.

  ‘What else does he send?’

  ‘A message. He says he is ready.’ Brooks paused, considering for a moment the possibility that he would not deliver the message faithfully. He knew that he had no choice, though.

  Javier nodded. ‘You delivered my message?’ he asked. ‘You told him our eastern friend is with us?’

  Brooks nodded. He didn’t understand the code, but he didn’t like the sound of any of it. ‘I gave him that message,’ Brooks said. ‘He said he understands.’

  Javier stared into Brooks’s eyes for a moment, as though searching for some sign of deception. He wouldn’t find any, though, Brooks knew. He was relaying the messages faithfully. It might cost him his soul, but he had memorized the phrasing and delivered the words with precision.

  Javier rolled up his window, backed out of his parking spot and pulled out of the rest area.

  Brooks sat in his car for a moment, wondering what series of events he had just set in motion; wondering whether people would die as a result, and whether he would be able to live with himself if they did. The window was still rolled down, and it was colder outside than he could ever remember. And yet, as he caught his reflection in the rear view mirror, he saw sweat trickling down his temple.

  * * * * *

  It was nearing midnight as Kit pulled to the curb in the heart of East Boston’s Latino neighborhood. During the summer, the place would have been alive with passion. The outdoor music and revelry would have been deafening, but at the moment the place was frozen solid, like the rest of Boston. It was as though the cold had slowed the blood in everyone’s veins, and movement itself had become difficult. Everything felt thick and sluggish.

  It was foolish of her to be there, she knew. No, not foolish. Foolish didn’t capture it. It was asinine for her to be there. It was dangerous for her to be there. It was possibly criminal for her to be there. She’d considered calling someone for backup. She could have reached out to Agent Martin, but she couldn’t trust him. It wasn’t because she thought he was bent, it was that she was confident that he wasn’t – and she was. As a result, she couldn’t involve him without risking all of her transgressions coming to light. She didn’t care about being caught, but she couldn’t live with the possibility that her work would be undone, and that Vincente Carpio might slip through their fingers again.

  She walked into the Colombian restaurant on the narrow corner where Bennington Street intersected with Chelsea Street. The cold wind blew in with her, and everyone in the place turned to look. None of the faces were friendly. They regarded her with suspicion and hostility. She stood there, looking at them. After a moment, they went back to their business, but quietly. There was an interloper among them now, and the talk came in whispers. She could hear numerous languages being spoken, none of them English. Spanish was dominant, but she could hear Vietnamese and Eastern European cadences as well.

  A young man approached her. His skin had the tan glow of a South American, and his hair was unruly. He had an elaborate tattoo of a cross on his forehead. A snake wound around the cross as though to strangle it. Two ‘13’s were incorporated into jewels at the top and the bottom of the cross. His eyes seemed dead as they regarded her.

  ‘In back,’ he said to her.

  ‘I sent word, only in a public place,’ she responded.

  The young man’s eyes turned angry and confused. He started to sputter in Spanish and gesture for her to move to the back of the restaurant, toward a door.

  ‘I said only in public,’ she repeated, more forcefully this time. He didn’t speak English, though, and her intransigence was angering him.

  He began to push her, and leaned in close to her face as he jabbered at her in Spanish. She whiffed the chemical stench given off by meth addicts, and she could see the gaps in the young man’s mouth where teeth should have been. His voice was raised, and the patrons in the restaurant had grown quiet at the commotion. Steele noticed that none of them looked directly at her. They looked straight down at their drinks and their food, and they refused to acknowledge what was happening.

  Her hand was in her bag, touching her gun. The wise move would have been to leave right then. She was still close to the door, and there was no question that she could have been out of the place and
speeding away before anyone could react. That was what she should have done.

  But she couldn’t bring herself to take the wise path. She’d been promised information, and she couldn’t pass on the possibility that it was a genuine offer. Besides, they would have to be crazy to kill a federal agent, wouldn’t they?

  She slipped her hand off her gun and out of her bag as she allowed herself to be pushed toward the door at the back of the restaurant. As she made her way through the tables, not one patron looked up at her.

  * * * * *

  Something was wrong.

  Cormack could feel it deep down in his marrow as he sat in his office, looking out at the harbor. Events had not played out as they were supposed to. For the best part of two days he’d telegraphed where he was going to be at various times. He made sure that there were plausible reasons for his whereabouts to become known throughout the waterfront community. He’d had Toby set up a union meeting, where the rank and file needed to be reassured that he was still in control. That would have been a prime opportunity for Soh to try something.

  At that meeting, he’d let it be known that he would be visiting the Customs Office later that afternoon to press for reforms that would ease the workload for stevedores who were charged with keeping count of containers and tonnage removed from ships in the harbor. It was the view of the union that there should be a separate position for such monitoring. This would result in less work and more jobs controlled by the union. Again, when he visited the Customs Office, he’d been as exposed as he would ever be.

  And yet Soh never took the bait.

  It was possible that Soh had suspected that each opportunity was a trap – which they were, though imperfect traps that still left Cormack vulnerable. Cormack could have as many eyes as he wanted watching him, but a single bullet would still end his life, and make Soh’s path to power free from any impediment. It was hard to believe that Soh had resisted the urge to have Cormack taken out, particularly when he’d already taken greater risks to do just that. It didn’t make sense.

  ‘Maybe one of his own men killed him,’ Cicero proffered an answer to the silent questions he knew Cormack was asking.