Blood in the Water

by Jack Flynn

  She slid out of bed and put on some jeans. They were feeling tighter, and she realized that she would soon have to start wearing bigger pants. The thought made her laugh to herself. She’d always been thin, and she wondered what it would be like to gain weight.

  The stairs creaked as she went down to the first floor. ‘Mike?’ she called. She was pretty sure one of the men whom Cormack had left to guard her was named Mike, though she could be wrong. It could have been Mark. She couldn’t remember even being introduced to the other young man. ‘Mike?’ she called again, muddling the name a little, so that if his name was Mark, he might somehow not notice.

  No one answered, which she thought was odd. Perhaps it meant that she was wrong about the name. ‘Mark?’ she called as she came off the stairs and walked through the living room toward the kitchen. She was feeling the twinge of nausea that she’d come to expect in the morning, and she knew she had to get something in her stomach to chase the feeling away. ‘Mark? Are you in here?’

  She pushed the kitchen door open and walked in. She heard the door swing shut behind her. She nearly vomited as she beheld the scene. There was blood everywhere. It covered the counters and the floor. She could hear the sound of a man coughing over near the door to the outside, around the corner by the small entryway. She stepped gingerly in that direction. ‘Mark?’

  An arm suddenly clawed its way over the threshold from the entryway to the kitchen. The man’s head followed. It was Mark. Or Mike – she still wasn’t sure. He was covered in blood, and he was gagging and coughing. She could see a monstrous cut in his throat. His eyes were bulging out, pleading with her for help. And then, just as suddenly, he was pulled back into the entryway, and there was a grunt of finality.

  She was frozen, just standing there, looking toward the wall behind which her protector had just disappeared. ‘Mark?’ she said faintly.

  A man stepped from the entryway into the kitchen. She recognized him from Fort Strong. He had tattoos covering his face, and he was covered in blood and holding a long knife. ‘You are the daughter,’ he said. He stepped toward her. ‘I am here for you.’

  * * * * *

  At that moment, Cormack stormed into the union offices at the edge of Boston Harbor, at the end of Black Falcon Avenue. ‘Get the harbor traffic cleared, now!’ he shouted at Toby White, who was sitting at the desk overlooking the inconceivable traffic on the water. It seemed as though a person could walk across the harbor stepping on boats and not get his feet wet.

  Toby White didn’t move.

  ‘I said now!’ Cormack shouted again. ‘We need to get this cleared! Carpio’s using it to attack the courthouse!’

  ‘I can’t,’ Toby said at last. He’d pulled himself up almost into a ball on his chair, his crooked legs tucked unevenly under his body. ‘The radio’s busted.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Cormack demanded. ‘What happened to it?’

  Toby shrugged.

  ‘What do you mean busted?’ Cormack strode over to the desk and looked at the wreckage of the radio. The realization dawned on him. ‘Oh, fuck,’ he said. ‘It was you, Toby.’

  Toby looked away, unable to meet Cormack’s eyes. Cormack lifted him out of the chair and threw him into the wall, holding him by his shirt.

  ‘It was you. You knew that I was at the Mariner the night it burned. You told Soh I was there. You’re the one who has been feeding Soh information from the start.’

  ‘I didn’t want to,’ Toby said weakly. ‘I didn’t know what I was getting myself into.’

  Cormack pulled his fist back, ready to hit Toby in the face. He couldn’t bring himself to do it, though. He stood there, suspended. His legs felt weak. He loosened his grip on Toby’s shirt and let him slide to the floor. ‘You didn’t know what you were getting all of us into,’ he said. He pointed out the window. ‘Do you see that traffic out there, Toby?’ Toby refused to look, so Cormack grabbed him by the shoulders and forced him to. ‘Do you see it?’ he spat.

  ‘I see it,’ Toby whimpered.

  ‘That’s how they’re going to break Carpio out! They have boats! They’re going to use the traffic to get lost and outrun anyone chasing them!’

  Toby was curled into a ball.

  ‘If they get Carpio out, Soh will take over! He’ll be one of the most powerful gangsters in the country! You think he’ll protect you? You think he’ll honor whatever promises he’s made to you?’ He shook his head in disgust. Then he took his phone out of his pocket and dialed Kit Steele’s number again, but it went straight to voicemail. ‘God dammit, Kit!’ he screamed. He tried dialing the number of other cops he had in his phone, but no one picked up. Then a thought occurred to him, and he dialed Cicero Andolini’s number.

  ‘It’s a fuckin’ madhouse down here,’ Cicero said as he answered the phone. ‘I swear to God, I don’t know what’s gonna happen. Everyone’s lined up along Northern Avenue. It could be a riot. That may be what Soh and Carpio are counting on.’

  ‘It’s not!’ Cormack interrupted him. ‘It’s what they want the cops to believe, but it’s fake. It’s a diversion!’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Cicero responded. ‘What’s a diversion?’

  ‘The madness in front of the courthouse! They’re going to break Carpio out of custody from the water, not from the street! They have attack boats and Stinger missiles! They’re going to create a diversion out front and then try to break him out from the water!’

  ‘Shit. Is there any way to stop it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Cormack admitted. ‘We need to get word to the feds. We need to get to Kit Steele. I can’t reach them. You’ve got to get to them on the scene!’

  ‘I don’t have the best credibility with law enforcement personnel,’ Cicero pointed out. ‘I don’t think they’ll take my word for it.’

  ‘You’ve gotta try,’ Cormack implored. ‘I’ll figure out some way to get out on that water.’ He hung up and ran to the pile of manifests. ‘Toby, are there any boats we’ve got that aren’t being used?’ Toby hadn’t moved. He was still curled up on the floor. ‘Toby!’ Cormack picked the smaller man up, pulling him out of his fetal position.

  Toby struggled, putting his hands up over his face, as though protecting himself from an imminent blow. ‘There’s a MEP boat they just finished working on in the drydock!’ he whined defensively. ‘I think that’s it!’

  Cormack let him drop again and headed toward the door.

  ‘You don’t really think you can do anything, do you?’ Toby asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Cormack said. ‘But I’m going to try. If Carpio escapes and Soh takes over the harbor, we’re all fucked. He’ll control everything.’

  Sixty-Seven

  The crowds outside the federal courthouse had continued to grow throughout the morning, and they were now spilling into the street. News crews were set up along the sidewalks, their satellite links extending upward from their vans, temporary monuments to the sacred twenty-four-hour news cycle. Reporters – both the bleached-blonde bombshells from the national networks and their less glittering local colleagues – jostled for room to deliver their stand-ups from positions that gave their viewers the most intimate view of the chaos. The police and federal marshals fought against the tide of bodies, trying in vain to keep it back from the brick edifice.

  Buddy made his way across Courthouse Way, fighting through the crush of people calling for Carpio’s head on a stick. He wondered what the people who had come to protest the arraignment did for a living, and how they could take a day from their lives to show up to a circus like this.

  He and Cicero had concluded that it made little sense for Cicero to attempt to pass Cormack’s message on to law enforcement; he was too well known and recognizable to gain any traction. He might even be arrested. So it fell to Buddy to try to get someone’s attention. They also realized that reporting the information to a member of the Boston Police Department was likely to provide little value. The cops tended to have blinders on and focused s
olely on whatever task they had most recently been directed to accomplish. A cop tasked with crowd control wouldn’t listen to anyone trying to distract him – Buddy would be dismissed as a crackpot. Instead, he had to make his way to a federal marshal. It might still be useless, but it seemed that they were more likely to pay attention.

  The masses were most concentrated in front of the main entrance to the courthouse, so Buddy made his way along the side of the courthouse, down Courthouse Way. The ratio of protesters to law enforcement fell off dramatically as he approached the entrance to the garage. There were several police vehicles there, set up as barricades to prevent any unauthorized vehicles from passing. Buddy was still twenty yards from the garage when he was stopped by a police line.

  ‘This area is restricted, please move back, sir,’ a BPD officer informed Buddy firmly. There were no marshals nearby that Buddy could see, but a few yards behind the cop stood a young man in a blue windbreaker with ‘FBI’ stenciled in large yellow lettering.

  ‘Of course,’ Buddy said. ‘I just have a message to deliver to that man.’ Buddy pointed to the FBI agent.

  ‘Sorry, sir, you’ll have to do that later. We’re busy at the moment.’

  ‘It’s important, officer.’

  ‘Yeah, I’m sure it is,’ the cop said with derision.

  ‘Please, it’s a message for Kit Steele.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Special Agent Kit Steele. She’s the one in charge of Vincente Carpio’s detention.’

  The cop glanced down the street at the mayhem that was unfolding. ‘Figures there’s a woman in change of this shitshow.’ He turned and shouted to the FBI agent. ‘Hey! Agent Capshaw!’ The FBI agent turned. ‘You know who’s in charge of all this?’

  ‘The MS-13 Task Force,’ Capshaw responded.

  ‘You know the agent?’

  ‘Special Agent Steele.’

  The cop looked at Buddy with slightly less skepticism. Then he called back to Agent Capshaw. ‘This guy says he has an important message to deliver to her.’

  Capshaw made his way over to the police line. He looked at Buddy, clearly unimpressed with his appearance. ‘Yeah, what is it?’

  ‘You heard of Cormack O’Connell?’

  The agent frowned and there was an air of hostility in his gaze now. ‘The union guy, right? He’s a crook.’

  Buddy didn’t see the point in arguing. ‘Yeah, that’s him. He’s apparently had some dealings with Special Agent Steele in the past. He needs to get a message to her.’

  Capshaw looked unimpressed but reluctant to refuse to at least hear the message. ‘So, what is it?’

  ‘He says this is all a diversion.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘All this out in front of the courthouse. Carpio’s people are going to attack from the water instead.’

  ‘What the fuck are you talking about?’

  ‘Walk down the street and look in the harbor. You’ll see all the traffic. They have boats and they’re coming in from there.’

  The agent still looked doubtful, but there was an air of concern about him as well. ‘How does he know this?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Buddy said. ‘All I know is that everyone here is in danger. I was just sent to deliver the message.’

  The agent seemed to debate his options for a moment. Just then, though, there was a commotion out toward the front of the courthouse. The security convoy carrying Vincente Carpio was arriving. Because of the size of the crowd spilling into the street, they were having trouble getting through, and a few overly enthusiastic protesters had rushed the van to bang on the windows. That brought a forceful response from the police, which only seemed to encourage others in the mob. Soon, the entire law enforcement contingent was rushing toward the front of the courthouse.

  ‘Clear out of here!’ the cop standing next to Agent Capshaw shouted at Buddy.

  Buddy looked at the FBI agent, trying to reinforce the seriousness of his message. He couldn’t tell whether he’d been successful.

  A moment later, the agent joined in the chorus of law enforcement.

  ‘You need to clear out, sir!’

  * * * * *

  Suarez stared at the girl. Killing the two men had seemed simple; they’d been stupid. They thought their assignment was an easy one – who in their right mind would try again to get to Cormack O’Connell’s daughter? But then, Suarez had never been in his right mind. Not really. All it took was an innocuous noise outside the kitchen door to draw the first man in. Suarez’s blade sliced through his throat before he could make a sound. The second man had put up more of a fight, and then run to the kitchen, where Suarez carved him up effectively. He’d thought he was dead as he dragged his body back toward the door, but the man had more life in him than Suarez had anticipated. That was easily rectified.

  Now he was standing before the girl, covered in blood. She was staring back at him, her eyes wide with terror. His orders were simple. ‘Come with me,’ he said. ‘Come with me, or you will die now.’

  She was shaking her head, babbling something, perhaps begging him to leave her alone. He couldn’t make out the words, and his English had never been perfect anyway. He hoped she would see reason and come with him. Soh would kill her eventually, but at least that way Suarez wouldn’t be the one putting her under the blade. He’d started to wonder what all the killing was for. Soh was in the process of sacrificing the boys Suarez had recruited with promises of brotherhood and family. He’d always known that it was overblown, but a part of him believed it. He believed that the organization was giving these boys something they would never find anywhere else. Now it seemed that it was all a lie, and that realization had dimmed his desire for killing.

  ‘Come with me,’ he repeated.

  She was still babbling, backed up against the kitchen counter. It was foolish of her, and Suarez knew he couldn’t waste any more time there. He should just kill her and be done with it, but he thought, perhaps, if he gave one pull on her shoulder, she would overcome her shock and fear.

  He stepped toward her and pulled on her sweatshirt. ‘Come! Now!’ he ordered. He was looking into her eyes, and something about them literally took his breath away. He wondered what it was. And then he looked down.

  The large kitchen knife was sticking deep into his chest. Her hand was still on the blade. It seemed impossible, and it took a moment for him to comprehend what had happened. If he’d come to his senses before that, he might have lashed out with his own blade and finished his last job, but by the time that impulse came to him, his strength was gone. He tried to raise his knife, but she pushed him, and he slipped on the blood-covered floor. He fell hard, and now he was staring up at her. She still held the knife, and he looked down at his chest and the blood pouring out of him.

  ‘Get the fuck out of my house!’ she screamed. Of course, it was an absurd order. He would never make it off the floor alive, much less out of the house. She stared at him for another moment, and then ran out of the house, stepping over the body in the doorway.

  The last thing Juan Suarez heard was the old, beat-up Honda starting and pulling out of the driveway of the modest little house on L Street.

  * * * * *

  ‘No luck,’ Cicero reported back to Cormack by cell phone. ‘Buddy relayed the message to one of the feds, but it doesn’t seem like they took it seriously. The convoy just arrived and things are really starting to get out of control now. What do you want us to do?’

  Cormack was in a near-sprint toward the drydocks, lugging a sack with all of the weaponry that remained in the union office. It wasn’t much – a couple of handguns, two rifles and a shotgun – but it would have to do.

  ‘Get out of there and get over to the pier at the far end of the World Trade Center!’ he shouted.

  ‘What do you want me to do there?’ Cicero asked.

  ‘Wait for me! I’ll pick you up!’

  ‘Pick me up?’

  Cormack heard the incredulity in Cicero’s voice, but he ignored it,
turned off the phone and shoved it in his pocket. He had other issues to worry about at the moment.

  * * * * *

  Jim Jackson was a junior at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy, a college on Cape Cod that prepared students for careers in maritime and emergency services professions. He had an internship at the Boston Drydocks, where he was supposed to be learning high-level engineering and repair skills. As he’d learned early on in the internship, though, he was assigned primarily menial tasks associated with ship repair work.

  At the moment, he was at work sanding down some patchwork in the metal hull of a twenty-two foot boat used for patrols by the Massachusetts Environmental Police. The boat had struck a rock during a rescue a few months previously, and had been awaiting the final preparation to go back into the water since the deep freeze had arrived six weeks before. It was suspended over the pier by a small crane that could swing out over the drydock to lower the boat easily into the water once the repair work was completed.

  Jackson was lying on his back, under the boat, when he saw a man carrying what appeared to be a heavy canvas sack enter the repair area.

  ‘You can’t be here, sir,’ Jackson called out. ‘It’s a restricted area.’

  ‘Put the boat in the water,’ the man said.

  ‘What?’ It was such an odd order that Jackson didn’t even look up. He assumed it was a joke.

  ‘Put the fuckin’ boat in the fuckin’ water!’ This time there was no mistaking the tone for humor. Jackson slid half his body out from under the boat, and faced the barrel of an assault rifle. ‘You hear me?’ the man said. He was of average height, around fifty, with a salt-and-pepper beard and an Irish lilt in his angry voice.

  ‘Holy shit!’ Jackson thought he might soil his work pants. He put his hands up to his face, as though they might defend him against a bullet. ‘Holy shit, don’t shoot!’