The Fourth Gunman

by John Lansing

  One of the photographs was her father with his grinning youthful face sticking out of an MI battle tank during Operation Desert Storm, waiting to roll into Baghdad. He looked vital and attractive and so damn young. He’d believed in a cause he thought righteous. It had been a heady experience for about six months. And then two years later, he was back home, and the PTSD reared its ugly head.

  The second photograph was Roxy in uniform. She mustered out of the service when her father hit the skids back in the States. She blamed the United States Army for turning its back on the father she loved. And slowly but surely, as she’d witnessed her father sinking into oblivion, becoming a shell of a man, her fury blossomed.

  Roxy stood over her father and kissed him on the cheek. His eyes were closed, not responding to her touch. “I’m here, Daddy,” and then Roxy’s roiling emotions shut her down. Overwhelmed, she sucked in a ragged breath and whispered, “I miss you so much. Are you in there? Are you dreaming? I hope sweet dreams.”

  Roxy closed her eyes, and her father was seeing her off at the airport. He looked tired, she thought, having already suffered deep bouts of depression. The VA filled him with prescription drugs, but he hadn’t slept through the night in months.

  She’d found a double brown bag hidden behind the lawn tools in the garage, overflowing with empty Myers’s rum bottles. He’d pull a Coke from the second fridge out in the garage, spill half of it in the compost heap, and fill the rest with dark rum. Breakfast of champions. Thought he was getting away with something. Roxy kept his secret, a drunkard’s dream.

  But on that humid morning, his eyes had been clear and filled with pride, his daughter in uniform traveling to Fort Hood and then a six-month deployment to Afghanistan. Her father had held her face with both rough hands and squeezed a bit too hard. They smelled of Marlboros and raked leaves. She didn’t mind and held on to that scent, their connection.

  If there was one piece of wisdom he’d imparted before she went off to war, it was to meet trouble head-on. Because it sure as hell would be coming her way in the desert. No use delaying the inevitable. Never roll over, never run, but never look back. Little did she know that her true battle wouldn’t come from behind enemy lines.

  Roxy opened her eyes and whispered to her father. “I’ve found a way to rage against the machine. To get even . . . for you, for me. Just know, if I don’t visit for a while, I don’t want you to worry. You’re in good hands. If you can hear me, I want you to keep a good thought; payback is going to be a motherfucker. Know you are loved, Master Sergeant Fred Donnelly.”

  Roxy kissed him again and walked to the bureau, straightening the photographs.

  Her father’s eyes snapped open and blinked once. Roxy didn’t turn back as she walked out of the room. Her father blinked once again, and again, and then again as the blue vein on his temple throbbed, and his milky eyes reddened, and tears welled and escaped his personal prison.

  * * *

  Trent leaned over and pushed open the passenger door. He let Roxy engage her seat belt. “I know it hurts. Any change?”

  “He’s a shell . . . you could have come in.”

  “He gets agitated when I’m in the room.”

  “Bullshit.”

  Trent turned over the engine and pulled away from the curb. Roxy stared into the side mirror until the building that warehoused her father was swallowed up in the flow of traffic.

  Trent spoke in even tones, not wanting to set Roxy off but wanting his point to stick in case her commitment wavered. “Another story about the Afghan interpreters on NPR. Thirteen thousand waiting for visas. Supported the troops and now living with death threats.” He let his emotions free, anger now coloring his speech. “Interesting that nobody’s talking about the twenty-six thousand civilian deaths. They’re just shadow people, collateral damage. The cost of war.”

  Trent drove with one eye on the road and one eye on Roxy. He saw her face morph from emotional to warrior’s steel.

  “We’re late,” he said, running a yellow light, narrowly averting an accident.

  * * *

  The eighty-foot trawler had rust spots on the rust. The captain’s wizened face was crustier than the steel skin of his fishing boat. It wasn’t pretty, but the stalwart diesel engine cut smartly through the rough chop.

  Roxy stood on the bow while Trent, in the wheelhouse, unfolded his navigational chart and shared the coordinates of their trip with Rafi, the wiry Indonesian captain. Rafi had been paid handsomely to keep his mouth shut and not question their destination, or the need for the state-of-the-art underwater submersible that was canvas-wrapped and hanging from the heavy metal winches hooked off the boat’s stern.

  Roxy wiped salt spray from her cheek and stood resolute with her mission. She felt reasonably secure as she glanced back at Trent, knowing he’d be risking his life in a few hours, and felt a hint of melancholy as the San Francisco skyline bled into the Golden Gate Bridge and disappeared, the cloudy gray sky melding with the gray water obscuring the horizon.

  No turning back.

  Fourteen

  Jack had the top down on his convertible as he pulled to a stop in Marina del Rey. Roxy’s address was a P.O. box, but his call to Caroline Boudreau had directed him to slip 375—on the opposite side of the marina from where Jack docked his own boat—and the catamaran Roxy and Trent called home.

  Not bad, Jack thought as he took in their comfortable cat. Slip fees were cheaper than rent, and if you got bored, you could pull up anchor and change the scenery.

  One of the nice things about the marina midweek: there were very few people around. Jack jumped the chain-link security fence, winced at the stabbing pain that shot down his back on landing, and ambled along the dock with his compact evidence bag like he belonged. He walked to the end to make sure he was alone, then backtracked, stepped onto the catamaran, picked the lock as if he had the key, and shut the cabin door behind him.

  Jack checked his watch and gave himself fifteen minutes. In and out before he blew his cover. The interior of the catamaran looked homey and lived in, he thought as he took in the compact space.

  But something was out of kilter. And when he started looking in the desk drawers, he realized everything was too clean. No loose papers or bills, no clothes draped around the living space; the bed looked like something out of a magazine. The duvet cover was pristine. No computer or laptop in any of the drawers. The top of the desk gave off a sheen, as if it had just been sprayed with Pledge.

  He found two passports in the bottom drawer, along with a few nautical maps of the waters off the marina and surrounding areas up and down the West Coast, from Vancouver to Baja. He pulled out his cell phone and took photos of the maps and the passports: Roxy was dressed in military uniform; Trent had more stamps, which coincided with the brief summary he’d given of his world travels. Jack slid the maps and passports back into place and continued his search.

  He pulled sticky tape out of his evidence bag and went over the pillows, sheets, and shag carpet next to the bed. He bagged them and stepped into the head. He checked inside the medicine cabinet, and again, just your average over-the-counter meds, potions, and shaving gear. Trent had the upper shelf, Roxy the bottom. Jack pulled hair samples out of the shower drain and the wastebasket and moved to the galley.

  He pulled out the empty plastic garbage bag in the kitchen to see if anything had fallen underneath and came up empty. He checked the compact fridge and the small freezer. No cash, no drugs, a couple bottles of chardonnay, nothing out of the ordinary.

  It was clear from the clothes jammed into the built-in closet that Roxy and Trent were tight on space. Nothing in pockets, shoes, and suitcases. They must’ve been traveling light, Jack thought.

  He made one last pass around the kitchen, and wedged between the counter and the stove was a tight packet of brown paper bags for recycling. He rifled inside each bag, came up with two receipts that had been left behind, and pocketed them to check out later. In the aft of the cabin were a few
articles of scuba gear, but no tanks, masks, weight belts, or flippers. Maybe Trent left his gear on the Bella Fortuna.

  Satisfied that his search had been thorough, Jack glanced out the side window for the all-clear, stepped out, and locked the door behind him. Walking up the dock, he was greeted by one of the slip owners, who smiled warmly and thanked him for opening the locked gate.

  “Were you visiting Roxy and Trent?” the old gent asked without suspicion. When Jack raised his brows, “I saw you stepping off the cat,” he explained.

  “I’m in the market for a used catamaran. My broker said there was one for sale but sent me to the wrong slip. He texted 375 instead of 1375.”

  “I do that all the time. Technology,” he said, chuckling. “Well, enjoy your day.”

  “You, too, sir,” Jack said, feeling a twinge of guilt for lying to the old guy.

  Jack jumped into the Mustang and took the long route out of the lot. Just in case.

  * * *

  Roxy walked over to the bulky canvas-wrapped object, about the size of a Jet Ski. She unsnapped the fasteners, revealing a high-tech bright yellow one-man submersible with a large claw in the front, dual headlights, and a curved windshield to cut effortlessly through water.

  They dropped anchor fifty miles west of San Francisco, in a national marine sanctuary near the Farallon Islands.

  Roxy and Trent muscled a large lead container into a side compartment of the submersible and secured the latch.

  Trent, in full scuba gear, padded to the side of the craft, stepped onto the running board, then turned and dropped backward, splashing into the ocean.

  Roxy signaled the wheelhouse, and a loud rattle cut through the pounding surf as the captain lowered the amphibious craft into the dark water.

  Trent uncoupled the machine, engaged the engine, and let the craft idle until the boat’s lines were hauled up and out of the way. He gave Roxy a thumbs-up, pulled half of his body toward the front of the craft, gripped the steering mechanism, and put the mini-sub into gear, slipping below the water’s surface. The yellow glow of the headlights faded as the water’s depth swallowed man and machine, the only sign of life the compressed air escaping Trent’s regulator and bubbling to the surface.

  Two years of planning were coming to fruition, and the moment was so charged Roxy felt immune to the cold wind fanning her hair and reddening her neck, cheeks, and ears, or the glare of the captain, wondering what he had signed on for. She denied any possibility of failure and warmed to the prospect of success.

  * * *

  There was something mystical about being underwater, weightless, floating unencumbered, Trent thought as he checked the coordinates on his watch and slowly spiraled down toward the sea floor. If the dump site wasn’t located at the two-hundred-foot depth, then the ocean cratered at six thousand feet, and the mission would be aborted. He’d done his research, his due diligence, but was ready to work a grid pattern if his numbers were off by even a few degrees.

  The water was murky; the headlights cut two channels of light, enough to take care of business if the tides hadn’t shifted the underwater graveyard he was seeking. The sound of his breathing and the hum of the craft’s motor were elating.

  Trent skimmed the ocean bottom like a manta ray, startled a school of sea bass, and checked his coordinates again. He nosed the craft up a slight rise and then dove deeper. Sea grass swayed at 250 feet. A massive school of anchovies swarmed as one organism in a circular pattern, creating an undulating fabric of silver lit by the headlights, obstructing his vision, and then parted like an opening-night curtain.

  What they revealed spiked Trent’s blood pressure. The sound of his beating heart rivaled the tank’s breathing apparatus and the submersible’s whispering props as it cut through the deep silent water.

  A nuclear waste dump site.

  Federal records showed that from 1946 to 1970, nuclear waste was regularly dumped in the Atlantic Ocean and at dozens of sites off the coast of California. A product of the all-but-forgotten legacy of the Cold War, and Trent had stumbled upon that product when he was employed as an engineer at JPL, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

  Trent paused to slow his heart rate and raked his headlights across an acre of fifty-five-gallon steel drums in different states of disrepair from years of saltwater corrosion.

  Trent put the engine into neutral, let the submersible settle on the ocean floor, and got to work. He pulled out a dosimeter used to measure radiation emitted from spent fuel rods and waded into the haphazard grouping of corroding metal drums. Some of the containers were leaking, and he knew that over the years the water had dissipated their potency. The meter emitted a light buzzing sound.

  He swam a short distance to one container that looked to be airtight and as pristine as forty-six years underwater allowed. He ran the dosimeter around the circumference of the lid and startled as it gave off a harsh, extended rasp.

  Trent swam back to his submersible and set it down in front of the target metal drum. He slid out and vise-gripped the sides of the lid open, leaving it intact. He muscled the shielded containment box out of the body of the submersible and let it settle in the sand next to the drum. He unlatched the thick lead top and swam back to the craft.

  Operating on pure adrenaline, Trent hovered above the steel drum. The mechanical claw on the front of the submersible yawned open and delicately closed on the lid. Trent finessed the levers and as he tried to lift the heavy metal lid the claw slipped off. Once, and then again he missed his mark. Trent tamped down the growing panic, forced a state of calm and concentration, and on the fourth try, the claw closed on the edge of the lid and pried it up and off, raising a cloud of sand where it landed. Trent, elated when he saw the contents, soldiered on, no time or oxygen to spare.

  He floated directly above the drum and used the mechanical claw to pull out the first bundle of fuel rods, gingerly placing it in his own container. The nuclear fuel rods were long slender zirconium metal tubes housing pellets of fissionable material. One centimeter in diameter, the tubes came bundled together to increase their efficacy.

  Beads of sweat rolled down Trent’s forehead and stung his eyes as he went back, manipulating the mechanical claw until he had a second bundle securely placed in his lead-lined box.

  Trent switched on the GoPro underwater camera, shot the nuclear waste in the containment strongbox, then panned across the entire dump site, which looked eerily like a cemetery from hell. He then nudged the box’s lid closed, latched it, and set the submersible on the rippled sandy bottom.

  Trent ran the dosimeter around the secured lead box, relieved that the meter registered safe levels of radiation. He strained to secure the locked case in the body of the submersible, and wasted no time putting the engine into gear and arcing up and away from the steel drum, now leaking its deadly contents. Trent powered forward, building to five knots as he rose to the safety of the water’s surface.

  * * *

  The sound of a hardball cracking against a baseball bat usually calmed Jack’s world. Not this time. His son was standing at the mound in UCLA’s Jackie Robinson Stadium, and the batter had hit it high and long over the left-field wall. It looked like it was drifting foul, but no such luck.

  Chris’s girlfriend, Elli, yelped, “Shit!” Jack could relate.

  Chris sucked it up as the batter and the man on first scored. He had his game face on, but Jack could feel the pain. The game had been tied two to two, and now the Stanford Cardinals had to make up a two-run deficit. That was if Chris could make it out of the inning without giving up another run. The catcher pulled off his mask and ran up to the pitcher’s mound and conferred with Chris, trying to keep him focused.

  The Bruins and the Cardinals were both members of the NCAA Division Pac-12 conference. Stanford, UCLA, and USC had won more NCAA championships than any other conference in history. The rivalry was fierce and making the roster, being chosen to pitch, was no small feat.

  UCLA had two men out, and Jack was pow
er-eating his salted peanuts, trying to calm his nerves. The manager of the UCLA team put in a pinch hitter, a beefy lefty with powerful arms and a record to back them up. He was a senior and being scouted because he was that good.

  Chris denied the first two signals from the catcher. He nodded on the third, wound up, and fired a sliding fastball. The batter swung and hit nothing but air. Strike one. The Stanford fans roared. Jack was on his feet, crunching peanut husks underfoot.

  Chis threw the next two pitches for balls.

  Jack swigged his beer and drained it without thinking.

  Chris denied one signal and accepted the second. He took his time, pulled from his depths, and threw a blistering fastball.

  The batter stepped in and swung from his heels. The line drive rocketed at Chris, who stood tall, lifted his glove, and snatched it out of the air. The sound of the ball smacking against leather was like heaven on earth.

  Jack went airborne, pumping his fist, and watched with pride as Chris jogged to the team’s dugout.

  He looked down at Elli, who was taking her hands off her eyes. She looked up sheepishly. “I get too nervous.”

  Jack let out the breath he’d been holding. “I know what you mean. I know exactly what you mean. He did good.”

  Jack saw two Stanford pitchers warming up and wasn’t sure Chris was going to make it to the top of the seventh. The Stanford team went down in order, and Jack feared the manager was going to try and stop the bleeding.