5 - Choker: Ike Schwartz Mystery 5 (25 page)

Chapter 49

“What’s the problem?”

“They can’t launch underwater. Sunburns are air breathers. They have to dry launch.”

“Then they’ve figured out a way to keep them dry, Charlie. They bought launching tubes from a ship. That we know. There’s that air compressor and tank. At least one of those tubes is in the water and in compressed air sufficient to keep it dry.”

“And maybe the launchers are on the four ships. It would make more sense to mount them in the freighter’s hold.”

“I hate having to second-guess all the time. Can’t your intel people get us some hard data?”

“We’re trying, Ike. The problem is we don’t have many friends in the area any more, and the ones we do have are given to circumlocutions lately, like they think maybe we aren’t going to win and they need to keep an appearance of neutrality.”

“Or are playing both sides against the middle. Well, we know our pals across the bay have something. We scoured the place over there and turned up nothing. We have photographs taken over time. Where else could it be? I can’t think of any other way, Charlie.”

“Okay, but I have a really bad feeling about this.”

“Right, but I have no reasonable alternative. Somehow they must have rigged the things to launch from the water. They have a serviceable console and there is a cable running from that shed toward the bay; there is a big tank and an air compressor. It has to be.”

“I don’t know.”

“Neither do I, but without the option of an alternative, we go with the best guess. Go find your sailboat. You will need to be in place as soon as my guys return. Bunky can’t keep up the pretense forever.”

“I guess we have nothing else to do, but…”

“I know, I know…it isn’t clean and I’m missing something important but…”

Charlie left the room to rent a sailboat. Ike studied the series of satellite blow-ups again. What was he missing? Charlie had it right. This batch of obsolete Sunburns were air breathers.

The director called.

“Where are we, Ike?

“We’re almost ready to push off. Charlie went to find a boat to sail, and the SEALs are suiting up. Bunky is standing by. I had to promise him a new boat, by the way. Charlie said he’d get him one anyway, so all I did was spoil the surprise.”

“I would like a little reassurance, Ike.”

“Wouldn’t we all. Look, I’ve spent the last twenty hours or so going over it again and again. I’ve studied the satellite films. It’s the best I can do. If you start with July the fourth as a moonless night, which we know it was, and count back twenty-eight days, the
Saifullah
is in the channel every time, every twenty-eight days starting in May. That ship arrived on moonless nights because that would be the only time it could pull anchor, slip into Eastern Bay, and off-load materiel with any hope of not being detected.”

“Do you suppose in all that time, no one saw it? That seems a stretch.”

“Watermen might have, but they are so teed off with the government in general and the Chesapeake Bay authorities in particular, they might have decided not to bother reporting it. I don’t think there’s a law that says a ship can’t enter the bay. It’s just unusual—rare. And I think at least two people did see the ship and might have reported it if they had lived.”

“Who?”

“The couple on a sailboat, the
OPM
, were known to have been in the bay on the fourth, but were found murdered and adrift off Hampton Roads two days later. Charlie has the details.”

“What’s Charlie doing with a sailboat?”

“I have to go, sir. I’ll chat later. It’s enough to know we need him in one today.”

“I want your radio frequencies, and I want to be kept in the loop. I’ll ask Charlie myself. Now get going.”

***

A wind blowing up the bay from the south had raised a chop. Whitecaps punctuated the surface, and the little motor launch, with its Maryland Department of Natural Resources logo, rocked and pitched as it chugged out of the marina and into the rough water.

Ike wiped the spray from his face and scanned the east shore for evidence of Bunky Crispins and his friends. It had taken some persuasion to obtain his cooperation. Bunky had not been called on the previous night and waited until early morning before calling off his friends. But the possibility of a new boat finally swung him around.

Once in position, the crew waited for the watermen to arrive. They went through the motions of taking samples from the bay. Ike stood inside the boat’s small cabin with binoculars trained on the shore opposite. He could make out a solitary figure standing just into the tree line. From time to time he spoke into a mike on his shoulder. They were watching.

Bunky and his gang arrived, and the SEALs went over the side. Ike held his breath. In ten minutes, he’d know, and they would have the Sunburn spiked.

“Tiger Five, this is One. We have a problem.”

“Tiger One, go.”

“We are directly under the duck blind. There is no bottom here.”

“What?”

“I can’t be sure, but the water under it must be at least twenty, thirty feet deep.”

“Move in shore a bit.”

“Fine, there is a steep shelf here and now we’re looking at mud.”

“The tube may be buried up to its top. Look for something resembling a hatch.”

“Roger that.”

The radio reverted to static. Occasionally Ike thought he could make out a grunt. Bunky waved to him and pointed toward the shore. The rented yacht, with “Watermen Rock” still scrawled across its waterline, rounded the head and turned toward the duck blind.

“Tiger One, heads up. There is a yacht headed your way. Be careful. If they suspect you’re down there, there could be trouble.”

“Roger, Five. We’ll pull back ten yards and wait.”

Ike watched as the yacht hove to and dropped anchor. Once the anchor set, the crew moved aft and began setting up some sort of apparatus.

“Director, are you on line?”

“I’m here.”

“The sons of bitches are setting up a television camera. They’re going to record the shoot.”

“Got it. If they are doing it here, they’ll be doing it in DC as well. I’ll have Homeland Security alerted. They’ll start looking for the other crew on the ground.”

“Good luck with that.”

“Tiger One, where are you?”

“We are searching. With that boat on top of us, we can’t go into the shallows. So far, no tubes, no hatches,
nada
. The water is really deep here, Five. The duck blind is resting on stilts that have to be twenty feet long.”

“Keep looking.”

What kind of shooting platform teetered on stilts that long? And why build one over deep water?

“Ike, this is Charlie. I have you in sight. You want me in?”

“Keep tacking.”

“Five, this is One. We are out of options here. There is nothing in sight. We’ve searched the bottom from one end of the property shore to the other. We’re sorry. There’s nothing.”

There had to be. There was no other explanation.

“Any radiation?”

“Maybe a little. Some, yes…It’s not clear. Something in the area is emitting, but I can’t say from where. It’s pretty weak. This bottom has been stirred up a lot. It could be background.”

“Okay, pull back.”

“We thought we’d make a deposit, if you don’t mind.”

“A deposit?”

“It doesn’t make sense to drag these explosive devices all the way back. We thought we might leave them here…under the keel of this yacht.”

“I didn’t hear that. You can sail in, Charlie, you have some work to do.”

Chapter 50

Ike slumped back in the thwart and banged his fist on the gunwale. Where had he gone wrong?

“Ike?”

“Yes, Director, I’m here.”

“Status?”

“We’re in the toilet at this end. If the submarines can take out the four ships we can, at least, minimize this disaster. But five will get you ten this one is aimed right at the Capitol, and I can’t find it.”

“The Navy is getting some flak from the White House about sinking a neutral merchant ship in international waters.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“I wish I were. Look, the whole operation got off track from the beginning. The CIA had no business messing with a local jurisdiction and—”

“I told you that from the start. Didn’t I, Charlie?”

“It didn’t start out as anything remotely connected to terrorist attempts at—”

“Doesn’t matter, Ike, Charlie, it’s where we are now that matters. We have been deemed to be off the reservation.”

“Hell, I thought that’s why you dragged me in here. To give you deniability—”

“That was the plan, but the President’s Chief of Staff, Jack Barksdale, is out of sorts, and he has friends in Homeland Security.”

“Good for him. Ask him if he has friends in the undertaking business, because if he screws this up he’ll need them.”

“Okay, okay. Cool down. We’re clear to move but only if we can show something solid and we accept FBI operational control.”

“And they will be here when?”

“They are on their way.”

“Anything else?”

“He says he needs to be absolutely sure. In the meantime, the FBI and Homeland Security want to start their own investigation.”

“Tell them you’re sorry, but it’s too late.”

“It’s only too late if we have the wrong date. Even so, they still have two days.”

“One day.”

“I thought you said Wednesday, Yom Kippur is Wednesday.”

“Another slippage in my haphazard reckoning, I’m afraid. Technically, it starts thirty minutes before sundown, or in this case about 6:30
PM
, on Tuesday. These lunatics will launch the damned things as soon as they can, and at night. Remember, it will be daylight in Israel and most everywhere else they have eager spectators.”

“You mean…Jesus. I’ll go see the President.”

“Take Charlie with you. He’s from Charm City, he can turn on some of that old Baltimore schmooze.”

“I heard that.”

“Didn’t you tell me once you knew the President?”

“I met him back when he was the governor. I knew his sister better.”

“There, you see, Director, Charlie’s your man.”

“Can it, you two. Tell me what has to be done.”

“First, show him the map of the ship locations we found. Then, throw the FBI a bone to keep them busy. I can’t wait around here to bring them up to speed. Have someone else do it. Get Fugarelli out of bed. We have what’s left of today and tomorrow to find and spike the Sunburn, take pictures that we can download to the idiots in the White House, and hope they nod their heads up and down before they get their asses blown to kingdom come.”

“Can you do it?”

“No.”

“Ike…”

“We can try.”

Ike turned to the two SEALs, still in their wetsuits.

“Are you willing to go in again?”

“Hoo, yah.”

“Okay, here’s what I want you to do…”

***

The crew on the yacht waved away the boat with Bunky and his friends. Bunky ignored him and pulled alongside. The altercation had to last at least fifteen minutes, Ike had said. Bunky said he’d stay all day if these were the sons-of-a-buck that burned up the
J. Millard Tawes.
Ike assured him they were. The crew and the watermen had at it for nearly an hour. When it became clear that Bunky and friends were not going to leave them alone, and in the presence of an official Department of Natural Resources boat, they hauled anchor and left.

By that time the SEAL team had returned to the area of the duck blind. Bunky’s friends and some more workboats filled the area between it and the shore. Bunky lowered Ike’s metal detector over the side and let the craft drift across the property face. The men in the water waited. Each time Bunky got a reading, he dropped a crab pot over and the SEALs swam to it and began to poke through the mud.

On the first pass, they uncovered three tire rims and the radiator from a 1951 Nash Rambler. The rims had been filled with concrete and had once served as mooring anchors. It was unclear how the radiator found its way into the bay.

Bunky moved closer to shore. That drew the guard from the trees. The watermen immediately took up their complaints with him about the ruined crabbing bed. Ike got him in focus and took his picture.

“Tiger Five, sorry,
nada
. We have some suspicious depressions in the area and that low-level radiation, but nothing else.”

“Roger that. Bunky, as soon as the SEALs clear out, you do, too.”

“Aw, Ike, can’t we stay and do something to these dad-burned jerks?”

“Clear out. Now.”

***

“Any luck, Ike?”

“Director, we’re dead in the water. I know the missiles are here somewhere, but for the life of me, I don’t know where.”

“You said, they. There is more than one?”

“Yes, sir, I think so. If your people were correct in their assessment that six missiles are missing, that would mean two are squirreled away here, and one each on the ships.”

“I’m going in to see the President now. What can I tell him?”

“If he wants to keep from having another nine-eleven, he should suck them up and let us do what we have to do; that would include sinking the ships.”

“Barksdale thinks we should board and inspect them.”

“Then Barksdale is an idiot. These are the same people that gave the world suicide bombers. Does he really think they will even stop, much less meekly turn their ship over for inspection? They will run straight in, open their holds and launch.”

“What do you do now? I need to tell the President something.”

“You might suggest he remove himself to the Blue Ridge Mountains, or Camp David, or wherever you all stash the President nowadays when the rest of the world is going up in flames. Maybe he can figure out a way to keep those missiles from launching without letting the people whose finger is on the button know what we have. And good luck with that, too.”

“I’m only interested in your end. Do you have a plan?”

“Not yet, I’m missing something important. It’s right under my nose and I can’t see it.”

“I need something substantive.”

“Do you think we could call in an air strike, maybe put a Predator over that farm?”

“You’re crazy. An air strike on the continental United States? No way.”

“Then I’ll have to think of something else. Have fun with the President.”