The Second Perimeter (33 page)

* * *

CARMODY AND EMMA
stopped on the parkway, a hundred yards before the marina exit. It had only taken her ten minutes to get there, driving at breakneck speed from DeMarco’s Georgetown home. Her meeting with Li Mei was scheduled to start in fifty minutes.
Carmody opened the gym bag lying at his feet. He pulled a tube of camouflage paint from the bag, streaked his face and hands with the paint, and put on a black watch cap. All his clothes were black: black cap, black turtleneck sweater, black jeans, black boots. The next thing he took from the bag was a knife in a scabbard; he strapped the scabbard to his right leg with Velcro straps. After the knife came a silencer, which he screwed onto the barrel of the .22 pistol he had been holding. Then he took another pistol from the bag, a backup gun. He shoved the backup weapon into his belt behind his back. He executed the move so quickly that Emma wasn’t able to identify the make of the second weapon. The last item Carmody took from his gym bag was a pair of night-vision goggles.
“Just like the good old days, isn’t it, Carmody?” Emma said.
“No,” he said. “Back then I did this for my country.” There was an ache in his voice that surprised Emma.
“I need an hour,” Carmody said.
“I’m supposed to meet her in forty-five minutes,” Emma said. “She said she’d kill Joe if I wasn’t on time.”
“I need at
least
an hour,” Carmody repeated.
“That’s going to make her nervous. She’s liable to bolt.”
“Well, you better hope she doesn’t.”
Carmody reached up and pressed a switch so the dome light in Emma’s car wouldn’t come on when he opened the door. He placed his hand on the door handle but didn’t open the door. “By the way,” he said, “in case I don’t get out of this alive and you do, tell the navy that the Chinese didn’t get anything good from me.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The basic technology on navy nuclear ships is pretty old at this point. The first Nimitz class carrier was built in 1972. The first Trident, in ’79. The Chinese have had a lot of time to collect intelligence on our ships and there probably wasn’t much that I gave them that they didn’t have already. But when I got the CDs from the shipyard I went through them before I passed them on to Li Mei. I deleted the new stuff, particularly any mods made in the last four or five years. And I changed a lot of information in the manuals so some of what they got wasn’t accurate. Anyway, the Chinese got a lot of stuff, maybe some stuff they never had before, but none of the recent modifications to propulsion plants or weapons systems. On the operational side, I gave them absolutely nothing of any value. They would have learned more from reading press releases. Tell the navy it was the best I could do and still…and still do what I needed to do.”
“But
why
did you do it, Carmody? It wasn’t for money, was it?”
Carmody ignored her question and opened his door. “If you want to get out of this alive, give me an hour,” he said.
He was stepping from the car when Emma said, “The bottle rockets.”
“What?” Carmody said.
“That stuff in the box we found in your house was for a kid. It was for
your
kid, wasn’t it, Carmody?”
Carmody looked into Emma’s eyes for a minute but he didn’t answer her question. He shut the car door quietly and walked into the night.

* * *

“WHERE THE HELL
is she?” Li Mei said.
“She’ll be here,” DeMarco said.
“She’s ten minutes late.”
“Where was she coming from?” DeMarco asked.
“She said Manassas. But she was probably lying.”
“She wasn’t lying; that’s where she went after you tried to kill her at the club. It would take at least an hour to get here from Manassas because they’re doing construction on Route 66. That would have slowed her down, even at this time of night.”
That was a lie, about the construction. DeMarco didn’t know why it was taking Emma so long to get to the marina but she— or Carmody— had to have a reason. But Li Mei didn’t look satisfied by DeMarco’s explanation. She was agitated, probably trying to figure out what sort of trap Emma was setting. He wondered how long it would be before she decided to kill DeMarco and abandon the rendezvous.
Time passed with agonizing slowness, and while the minutes crept by DeMarco wished for a number of things. He wished that he could smoke a cigarette; at this point lung cancer was the least of his worries. He wished that he had called his mother recently and told her that he loved her. He wished that Diane Carlucci hadn’t been caught up in all this. He wished that he had taken that trip to Europe rather than just talking about it all these years. He wished that his marriage had lasted and that he had a kid. He wished. He wished. He wished.
A car turned onto the access road leading down to the marina. The car stopped for a moment at the head of the parking lot, then proceeded forward slowly, stopping again about a hundred feet from Li Mei’s vehicle. It was Emma’s Mercedes and her headlights were blinding DeMarco.

* * *

CARMODY LAY ON
the ground and peered through the night-vision goggles at the piers where the boats were moored. The boats— their hulls, their cabins— were all fluorescent green.
He didn’t know how many people Li Mei had brought with her, but he was guessing three. The car that had transported Li Mei and DeMarco to the marina had bucket seats in the front and wouldn’t comfortably hold more than five. This was assuming, of course, that another car hadn’t transported more men and then parked somewhere else.
So far he’d found two of Li Mei’s men. He found the first one almost immediately, hidden near the public restroom on the left side of the parking lot. He had guessed that a second man would be hidden near the marina office or snack bar, using the buildings for cover. The third guy would be on one of the piers behind Li Mei; that was the only place he could be.
It had taken him almost half an hour to get to the second man. He had to slither on his belly, using the sparse foliage around the marina for cover, and that took time. And to get to the marina office he had to pass within fifty yards of Li Mei’s car. If Li Mei had turned to look in his direction while he was crawling she might have seen him. But she didn’t turn.
He had just shot the second man in the back; he’d been hiding behind a Dumpster near the snack bar. Carmody studied the piers for a few minutes searching for the third man. He was most likely on the pier closest to Li Mei, but Carmody couldn’t see him. He turned his head to look at Li Mei and DeMarco. DeMarco was still standing at the front of Li Mei’s car, his butt resting against the hood. His hands were behind his back, and Carmody assumed they were tied or handcuffed. Li Mei was behind DeMarco, on his right-hand side, holding a pistol in her hand.
Carmody looked at his watch. Emma would be here any moment. To get the third man he had to search the piers and to do this he would have to go into the water. He didn’t think there was time to get the third man before Emma arrived. He crawled to the river’s edge.
Just before he entered the water he saw headlights at the top of the access road.

* * *

EMMA CHECKED HER
watch. It was time. She turned the key in the ignition and switched on her headlights and pulled back onto the parkway. She exited at the marina access road and drove to the head of the parking lot. At the other end of the parking lot she could see a car and a man standing in front of the car. She assumed the man was DeMarco. She drove slowly through the empty parking lot and stopped a hundred feet from Li Mei’s car. DeMarco was now clearly visible in her headlights and the expression on his face was grim. Grim and angry, but not afraid.
She couldn’t see Li Mei.
Emma slouched down so her head was partially hidden by the steering wheel, then she opened the driver’s side window and called out, “Li Mei, let Joe go. Let him walk up to the parkway. When he’s out of sight, I’ll get out of the car and we can talk.”
Li Mei laughed, the sound coming from someplace in the darkness off to DeMarco’s left. Li Mei must have moved as soon as she saw Emma’s car start down the access road.
“And after he leaves, he calls the FBI,” Li Mei said.
“No. As Joe told you, if I wanted you caught, the FBI would have arrested you in Chinatown. Or they would have been here by now. I just want to talk.”
“About what?”
“Let Joe go, Li Mei. If you don’t, I’ll back this car up, block the access road, and call for help. Lots of help.”
“You move your car and I’ll kill him.”
“But you won’t get me. Now let him go.”
DeMarco was thinking that Emma didn’t realize that Li Mei had people hidden nearby. If she tried to move her car, the Chinese guys would shred her tires with their damn Uzis. And if Li Mei let him go to appease Emma, her men would certainly kill him before he reached the parkway. Li Mei wouldn’t allow DeMarco to roam the parkway, trying to flag down a cop.
Emma— and DeMarco— waited for Li Mei’s answer. She finally spoke, her voice now coming from a place on DeMarco’s right. She was moving constantly so Emma couldn’t be sure of her position.
“Go on, you,” Li Mei said to DeMarco. “You can go.”
DeMarco didn’t move. Where was Carmody?
“What are you waiting for?” Li Mei said. “Move.”
DeMarco still didn’t budge. He couldn’t help Emma— unarmed and with his hands taped behind his back— and if he walked away, one of Li Mei’s people would come out of the dark and knife him as soon as he was out of sight. He needed a plan.
“Joe!” Emma said. “Just walk up to the parkway and keep walking. Don’t call anyone. I’ll be all right.”
DeMarco thought Emma sounded surprisingly confident— but then she always sounded confident. Not knowing what else to do, DeMarco walked toward her car. As he neared her car he said quietly, “She has three guys with her. They’ve got machine guns.”
“Don’t stop,” Li Mei yelled from the darkness.
“Keep walking, Joe,” Emma said.
“Where’s Carm—”
“Move, Joe!” Emma said.
Emma waited until DeMarco’s figure disappeared into the darkness behind her, then she took a breath and stepped from her car. She had had a good life, an incredible life in many ways. If it all ended this night, here by the Potomac, in sight of the Pentagon, so be it. There were worse places to die.
She walked slowly toward Li Mei, her hands in the air to show she wasn’t armed. She was wearing a tight-fitting pullover and jeans. She did a slow turn to show Li Mei she didn’t have a gun behind her back.
“Turn off your headlights,” Li Mei said. “A cop might see the car from the parkway and come down here. You don’t want to be responsible for any more dead cops, do you?”
“No,” Emma said, “you’ve killed enough people.” She walked back to her car and reached through the open window to shut off the lights then turned and continued toward the sound of Li Mei’s voice. She had yet to see Li Mei.
She had walked fifty paces when Li Mei said, “Stop.”
Emma did.
“I know if I raise my head right now, I’ll be shot,” Li Mei said. “You have a sniper out there somewhere, don’t you?”
“No,” Emma said. “I came alone like I said I would.”
Li Mei laughed. “You think I’d trust you?”
There was nothing to say to that.
“Why did you want this meeting?” Li Mei said. “Why didn’t you have me arrested in Chinatown?”
Where was Carmody? Emma was running out of things to say.
“Because I don’t want anyone else to die because of me, and if I had sent the FBI to Chinatown, a
lot
of people would have died. I came here to make you an offer, an offer to live. If you give up Carmody’s and Washburn’s files, and agree to cooperate with our intelligence agencies, in a few years you’ll be free, free to live wherever you want, free to begin a new life.”
Emma had no authority to make such a deal but that didn’t really matter. She was just stalling.
Where are you, Carmody?
Li Mei didn’t answer for several seconds. Then she stood up and walked toward Emma, a pistol in her hand.
“You’re a fool to think I’d accept such an offer,” Li Mei said. “And you were an even bigger fool to come here tonight.”
Emma didn’t say anything. She’d run out of words.
“There’s a trawler waiting off Cape Henry,” Li Mei said. “My people still want what’s inside your head. So you’re going to take a cruise. On your way to China, you’ll be interrogated and tortured and probably raped. When you reach China you’ll be interrogated and tortured some more. You’ll betray your country and you’ll die alone, debased and humiliated.
That
will make up for Hawaii.”
Emma assumed that Li Mei was telling the truth: that she’d contacted the Chinese at some point in the last two hours and made a deal with them to take her if Li Mei could arrange delivery. But Emma also imagined the Chinese wanted Li Mei more than they wanted her.
“If you try to hand me over to your people they’ll kill you, Li Mei.”
“Maybe. Or maybe I’ll make the exchange and survive. What I won’t let them do is capture me. And if I die, I’ll go to my death with the satisfaction of knowing that you’ll suffer for months, maybe for years. That’s enough for me.”
Keep her talking.
“My God, Li Mei, you’re still a young woman. Is that all you want from life, for me to suffer?”
“Yes,” Li Mei said.
That was all, just “yes.” Nothing mattered to her anymore but destroying Emma.
“One more thing,” Li Mei said. “Your friend dies, too.”
Li Mei suddenly called out in Chinese. She screamed, “Kill the white man.” Emma’s Chinese was too rusty to understand her but it didn’t matter, she knew what Li Mei meant.
“No!” Emma screamed.
A moment later there was a burst of gunfire. It took Emma a few seconds to realize the shots had
not
come from behind her, the direction that DeMarco had taken, but from one of the piers.

* * *

DEMARCO HAD WALKED
through the parking lot and started up the access road, toward the parkway. He turned his head once to look back at Emma and saw her standing near her car. He couldn’t see Li Mei.
He looked around, into the darkness. Where the hell was the Chinese guy? He knew one of the men was on the pier near Li Mei and one was near the concession stand, but one had to be close to him, hidden somewhere on the grassy strip. And that big bastard Carmody, where was he?
He didn’t think the Chinese gangster would shoot him; that would make too much noise. But any minute now, as soon as he was completely out of Emma’s sight, and before he could reach the parkway, the guy was probably going to come out of the bushes and put a knife into his gut. He knew it. He had to get his hands free. Fast.
He looked behind him again. He could barely see Emma. Twenty yards away, there was a bend in the access road and there were trees near the bend. He walked toward the bend as fast as he could. He didn’t think Li Mei would be able to see him there— the trees should block her view— but the Chinese guy on the grassy strip probably
could
see him. As soon as reached the bend he went for the nearest tree and started to scrape the tape binding his hands against the bark of the tree. He rubbed frantically, peeling off more skin than tape, and it hurt like hell— but finally the tape came free.
Now what? Run up to the parkway and try to flag down a car, or stay with Emma? The smart thing to do would be to run to the parkway before one of the Chinese guys could get to him. So he ran toward the parkway— but he wasn’t going to abandon Emma.
DeMarco’s idea was to run toward the parkway but before he reached it, he would double back. If the Chinese guy on the grassy strip was watching him, he’d think DeMarco was fleeing. So if he went toward the parkway and then looped back, he might be able to get behind the guy. Probably not a very good plan— probably a really dumb plan— but he didn’t have a better one. He needed to find a big stick or rock, he thought, and then he started running.
DeMarco couldn’t see well in the dark and he couldn’t find Li Mei’s man. He was moving slowly now, cautiously. Three or four minutes passed, maybe more, and he was almost back to the parking lot and he still hadn’t seen the bastard. With his luck the guy was some kind of ninja who could make himself invisible. He continued to move forward, probing the darkness with his eyes. He hefted a big rock he’d picked up, ready to throw it if he saw the guy. And then he saw him.
He was lying on the ground near the public restroom, but he didn’t seem to be hiding because he was lying on his back. DeMarco moved quickly forward, intending to launch himself at the man if he moved, but he didn’t. He reached the man and touched him. He didn’t move. He wasn’t cold yet, but DeMarco thought he was dead. He didn’t bother to check for a pulse; there wasn’t time. Instead he searched the ground around the body with his hands. He found the man’s gun, the Uzi or whatever the hell it was.
Now he was ready. He was pissed off and he was armed. Armed with a gun he didn’t know how to shoot, but armed nonetheless. He started moving forward toward Li Mei’s position. As he walked he tried to figure out where the safety on the gun was. He found a little switch near the trigger guard, but he didn’t know which way to flip it and it was too dark to see any markings on the gun. Would the guy have had the safety on or off? DeMarco wondered. DeMarco bet the safety was off. If it had been him, the safety would have been off at this point.
And then he heard the sound of another Uzi firing.
Who the hell had they killed: Emma or Carmody?