The Molly M rounded Smith Point as dawn broke behind them on the unobstructed eastern horizon. The ten mile wide mouth of the mighty Potomac River was at first indistinguishable from the rest of the bay, but the Maryland shore gradually became visible in the spreading daylight. Chuck the realtor’s Baycruiser could be seen through binoculars as one of several white dots two miles ahead of them. Archie and Edith were somewhere off to their west, shadowing them on the Virginia side. They were ready to meet the Molly M at a series of marinas, if Tony, who was up ahead on Chuck’s boat, called back to warn them of security patrols on the river.
Barney Wheeler prepared a Spartan breakfast of coffee and oatmeal on the galley’s two burner propane stove. Brad and Ranya took theirs outside and sat on white plastic lawn chairs between the transom and the engine box, staring back at the V-shaped wake bubbling and churning behind them as the diesel drove them along. They’d talked through the pre-dawn hours in the same two chairs as the Molly motored up the bay, until the stars faded and the horizon returned. Now they ate in silence, still looking southeast. Facing the unbroken horizon behind them, it was easy to imagine they were already on the open ocean, and to forget that the land was closing in around them like the narrowing jaws of a trap.
After they finished, Barney Wheeler came out of the pilothouse carrying a white five gallon bucket with a short rope tied to the handle. He was wearing long khaki pants and a green flannel shirt. “The cook doesn’t do the dishes. That’s one of the laws of the sea.” He put down the bucket, and sat on the flat transom board facing them.
“I’ll show her how to catch seawater,” said Brad. “She’ll need to know how to do the dishes when we’re on the ocean.”
Ranya shoved an elbow into his side when he said this, but they were both laughing.
“You know,” he continued, “catching a bucket full of seawater from a moving boat’s not as easy as it looks. Do it wrong, and you’ll lose your bucket, or maybe even get yanked off the boat. Imagine how stupid you’d feel, treading water and watching your boat sail over the horizon.”
“Don’t worry, Brad; if you fall overboard I’ll bring Guajira back around and pick you up,” she said, kidding him back. She was wearing her new black nylon warm-up suit; the breeze was flicking strands of hair from her ponytail around her smile.
“Gee, thanks! Seriously, you might be able to turn the boat around and get me if you’re awake and on deck, and you saw me go over. But it can take a long time to get a big sailboat stopped and turned around on the ocean, especially in big waves. By then…”
“So, don’t fall overboard?” she said, mocking him playfully.
“That’s the general idea. If you fall overboard on the ocean, you’re dead. You’re lost out of sight in the waves in a minute. So no matter what, don’t fall overboard.”
Wheeler asked, “Where are you two headed after tonight? Not to be too specific, mind you…” They hadn’t been very talkative during their two days at the halfway house, not with Chuck and Tony around, but Guajira’s existence wasn’t a secret from Barney. He’d seen the boat and talked to Brad on it when it was still up the Nansemond River.
“We’re not sure yet,” answered Brad. “South America, eventually. Someplace warm, someplace out of the way.”
“Preferably without an extradition treaty,” added Ranya.
“You might want to give a look at Brazil then. You know, extradition laws don’t mean much any more. If the feds really want you, they’ll just send a snatch team down to grab you and bring you back. No problem. They do it all the time now. The courts say it doesn’t matter how they bring a fugitive back. But Brazil and Washington aren’t getting along too well these days, so I don’t think the feds would send a snatch team there. Too risky; their snatch team could wind up in the slammer if it was operating without local permission, and Brazil wouldn’t give permission.
“But you’ll have to be on your toes watching out for bounty hunters, even local ones. Sometimes the feds pay bounty hunters, and then they pretend they’re surprised when their fugitive’s dragged back to the states. And I’d be very, very careful in the smaller islands. There’s no place to run and hide, and their governments are afraid to stand up to Uncle Sam. Tourism and foreign aid are all they’ve got, so they’re easy to strong arm. They’ll do whatever Washington tells them to, including putting you right on a plane for Miami. So don’t get too comfortable on any small islands. Once word gets back to Washington…”
“It’s definitely something to consider,” said Brad.
“Ranya, do you know how Brad and I met? Did he tell you that story yet?”
She laughed. “You mean how he spilled the beer and passed you a note in Lester’s Diner? At the last meeting of the dreaded Black Water Rod and Gun Club? Oh yeah, I’ve heard it. ‘Read this note!’ I think we’ve basically told our life stories a few times now.”
“It sounds funny today,” said Brad, “but it sure wasn’t funny at the time.”
“If you’re heading south, aren’t you worried about hurricanes?” asked Wheeler. “This is just about the most dangerous time of the year for being out on the ocean.”
“Not as dangerous as hanging around in the states, especially after tonight,” replied Brad.
“Well, that’s true. I can see your point there.”
“I’ve got a single-sideband radio and a laptop, so I can get the weather fax. If a hurricane’s coming, I’ll see it days out and get out of the way.” He almost added, “Unless we get clobbered by a pop-up hurricane,” but he didn’t see the point in worrying Ranya unnecessarily. They had more than enough to worry about already.
Ranya asked Wheeler, “Do you think it’ll work? I mean, if we catch Malvone and make another confession video, do you think we’ll be able to get anybody to believe it?”
Wheeler sucked in his breath and looked up, as if he was searching for an answer in the clouds. “Probably, if we do it right. And if we can catch a few breaks too. Hey, if I didn’t think so, I wouldn’t be here. And besides, and don’t laugh now…it’s our duty.”
After a moment to digest that, Brad said, “I’m not laughing.”
“Neither am I,” said Ranya. “You know, I think about this all of the time, and I still don’t understand why any of this happened to us. Fate, karma…something. But it just seems like everything’s been a lot more than just a string of accidents.” Brad reached across and held her hand, nodding as she continued. “Somehow, we all got caught on this train wreck, and now we’ve been given a chance to do something about it. And if we won’t try when we have a perfect opportunity, who will? If we just took off and left the country, when it’s heading straight into a civil war, when we could have done something to stop it… Well it just seems like we’d be running away from our duty, like you said.” She shook her head slowly in wonder. “And a month ago, I was just starting my last year at UVA… Every single day I still can’t believe what’s been happening, but it’s happening.”
Brad was watching her closely, absorbing her serious intent, and said, “I agree, I guess. It does seem like this thing was dropped onto our laps for a reason, for us to do something about it. And now here we are. But I don’t think Malvone’s going to just be sitting around waiting to get hit. Not with Hammet and Garfield missing.”
Wheeler heard his trepidation and answered, “Hammet’s not going to be missing much longer, if they haven’t found him already. But they won’t be able to fix his time of death, at least not today they won’t, so Malvone won’t know how long he’s been dead. Malvone’s logical assumption will be that he’s been dead since Monday night. That he was forced to call Swarovski under duress, just before he was killed.
“Now Malvone won’t know what to think, but he’ll be relieved that Hammet’s dead. It’s much better for him than wondering when good old George is going to show up, and maybe start talking about the stadium, start going for an immunity deal. Hammet showing up dead is going to be great news for Malvone; he’ll just have to wonder about the details. He’ll probably think somebody screwed up, and one of you grabbed a gun and turned the tables. That’s what I’d think. It’s much more believable than what really happened, that’s for sure! So I think Malvone’s going to be thrilled to hear that Hammet’s dead, and that’ll make it easier for us.”
“But even so, there’s only five of us, against at least five of them,” said Brad.
“But they’re just thugs, they’re just goons,” said Ranya. “They don’t train for defense. They just train to shoot people in their sleep, and ambush people crossing their yards in the dark.”
“She’s right, Brad. If we can keep the element of surprise, we’ll take them. I don’t care who they are, they all bleed when they get shot. Of course, we’re assuming that Malvone’s there at all.” Wheeler rapped his knuckles against the wooden transom board.
Brad said, “Phil calls you the ‘Rev.’ Is that just a nickname, or are you really some kind of a minister?”
Wheeler laughed. “Yep, it’s true. I’m an ordained minister, or at least I was the last time I checked. But then, I haven’t really checked in a while… I’m not too sure how the Man Upstairs sees me anymore. I guess you might say I’m a shepherd who’s lost his sheep, lost his staff, lost the whole darn thing just about. Why’d you ask? Any particular reason?” He looked back and forth between the two of them, Ranya looked confused but Brad sat forward purposefully.
“Well,” said Brad, “I was just kind of wondering if you had your Bible handy, the one from the kitchen at the river house.”
“Sure, I’ve got it around here somewhere.”
“And maybe you remember some prayers for special occasions?”
“Special occasions? Such as…what? Baptisms? Funerals? What did you have in mind?”
Ranya was squeezing Brad’s hand so hard that it almost hurt. She was turned sideways staring hard at him.
“Actually, I was thinking maybe of something in between those two.”
“Between a baptism and a funeral? Let’s see, Holy Communion perhaps? Or Confirmation? Not Ordination?”
“Not exactly.”
“I see. You want to get married. Did you have anybody in particular in mind?”
“Actually, I do.”
Tears began rolling down Ranya’s cheeks. “Brad, why? You don’t have to, I don’t…you didn’t…”
“Bradley, do you mean you haven’t even asked her yet? Isn’t that customary? Why don’t you two talk this over a while, and we’ll discuss it again some day.”
“Barney, we don’t have another day; we only have today,” he said. “I mean, after today, we’ll be sailing south.”
“Well then, are you both really sure it’s what you want?”
“Yes.” said Ranya, wiping her tears with her sleeve.
“I’m assuming you’re both baptized Christians? I’m not choosy, but I’m pretty sure that’s a requirement, at least as far as my jurisdiction extends.”
“We are,” replied Brad.
“I don’t need any time to think it over,” said Ranya, facing Brad, holding both of his hands in hers. “I’ll marry you, right now.”
Wheeler said, “Eventually, you’ll have to get a license from the state, some state anyway, and make it official. Government-wise I mean. But in the eyes of the Lord, you’ll already be hitched fair and square, till death do you part. Now I wouldn’t normally go along with something like this, not in a million years, but under these circumstances, wartime you might say…well I’ll marry you right now, if that’s what you want.”
Ranya was crying again, and Brad held her against his chest as she buried her face in her hands. She had no family, and no home. There would be no church, no white wedding dress. No priest, no bridesmaids, and no reception. No father to walk her down the aisle. Just this one day, out on the bay on a workboat. But she couldn’t afford to be picky, because time was not on her side. Not with tonight’s deadly job awaiting them up the river.
Fifteen minutes later they were married, standing in the Molly M’s pilothouse, with Phil Carson and Captain Sam as witnesses. The skipper provided a small pair of stainless steel circular cotter rings from his spare parts box, and these two silver bands were the total extent of their wedding accoutrements. The mood was somber and reflective as Barney Wheeler read the passages, with no forced attempts at wedding ceremony humor. Brad and Ranya said their “I do’s,” they kissed as man and wife, and it was done.
****
Several local freelance reporters and various other busybodies with police scanners heard the park rangers call the Chesapeake police, and then heard their call for a tow truck to pull a car out of the Dismal Swamp Canal near Soyland Road. Of course, none of them heard the original telephone call from an unidentified “early morning fisherman” tipping the rangers off to the exact location of the sunken vehicle in the first place. Later on, nobody wondered how the anonymous fisherman had managed to spot the red SUV through ten feet of murky water, or why he didn’t come forward to bask in his fifteen seconds of local television news fame.
In any case, by 8:45 AM the big highway wrecker was in position and taking a strain on its steel retrieval wire. A police diver had already attached the heavy cable to the red Cherokee’s towing hitch, and then righted the vehicle on the bottom with empty lift-bags, which were inserted through the partially open driver’s window, and inflated from his air tank.
There were several television cameras aimed at the canal when the SUV emerged, with water streaming out of the half open window. More water flowed from the door edges and from underneath the chassis as it was dragged up the muddy bank onto the shoulder of Route 17. Police and rescue workers talked in small huddles, smoking cigarettes and drinking 7-11 coffee inside the perimeter of yellow tape. Another television station’s helicopter filmed the recovery for the “news at noon” from a thousand feet up.
A quick DMV check of the license plate, read through telephoto lenses and binoculars by the gathered reporters, revealed that the red Jeep Cherokee belonged to one George Hammet of Virginia Beach. Camera crews kept, behind the perimeter, captured the bloated remains being extracted from the vehicle and zipped into a gray body bag, but this grotesque footage would never air. Dozens of crabs were also in the car…
The rumor quickly spread among the watchers that Hammet was a cop of some type, and that an empty whiskey bottle had been taken from the jeep along with his crab-eaten body. “Closed-coffin funeral” was a phrase which passed from reporter to reporter. The corpse had almost no face left at all, it was said. Reporters with police contacts on the other side of the yellow tape said knowingly to their less connected colleagues that it looked like the victim had failed to negotiate the turn from Soyland Road onto Route 17 at a high rate of speed. They winked when adding that Hammet’s friend Jim Beam hadn't helped him keep his wheels on the road.
By the time the video earned its minute on the local news at noon, it had been verified that George Hammet was an ATF agent working out of their Norfolk Field Office, and that he left behind a wife and daughter in Virginia Beach. The empty whiskey bottle was not mentioned, but it was euphemistically stated that “alcohol may have been a contributing factor in the fatal one-car accident.” No connection was made between the apparent accidental death of Special Agent Hammet, and the recent killings of other ATF and FBI agents across the region and the nation.
(The internet-generated Fed List was widely known of within the local media community but, in keeping with management instructions, at the request of the Department of Homeland Security and the FCC, it was never mentioned. The existence of the Fed List remained a rumor floating around on the internet.)
The ATF’s Norfolk Field Office was relieved to hear that Hammet’s Glock pistol and ATF credentials had been recovered from his vehicle. They were unaware that his STU-issued 10mm MP-5 submachine gun, along with its night sight and suppressor, as well as night vision goggles and other valuables were gone. The awkward fact that Hammet had been found dressed only in his underpants, with his clothes strewn about the vehicle, or that he had a blood alcohol level of .16, was kept within a select circle of the law enforcement community.
****
Wally Malvone drove his Lexus from his home on Tanaccaway Creek to the nearby Special Projects Division compound outside Waldorf, making the trip in ten minutes and arriving at 9:30 AM. The SPD was officially under the command of Bob Bullard, and he didn’t want to undercut his authority by becoming a permanent presence. The fact was, he could set his own hours, splitting his time between Waldorf and his office at ATF Headquarters.
He was pleased to see the uniformed and armed private security guard manning their gate; a prefab steel and glass guardhouse had been brought in overnight on a flatbed truck and deposited in position. The guard checked his credentials against a clipboard, and waved Malvone through as if he had been standing watch at that location for years and not only hours. The guard service had been arranged and contracted by their black-budget fixer, “Mr. Emerson.” The entire acreage of the light industrial park was already surrounded by a chain link fence topped with razor wire, beyond which lay open fields.
The SPD Supervisory Agents’ offices were inside a 10,000 square-foot steel warehouse which also contained many of their vehicles. The right side roll-up door was all the way open. Malvone pulled his white Lexus inside and parked it. With so much square footage available to the original STU operators and techs (who were only the nucleus of the SPD) there was no reason not to park their vehicles inside and out of sight. The offices were built in a line along the right side wall inside the warehouse. When he opened the door to the office he had previously selected, the new carpet odor was still strong. The walls were still unpainted, showing the white seam tape and plaster over the sheetrock. The painters were scheduled to do their work over the weekend.
Bob Bullard caught up to Malvone as he was going into his office, with Joe Silvari trailing behind him. Bullard said, “Wally, we need to talk. They found Hammet.”
Malvone stopped in the doorway, his leather briefcase hanging at his side. “They found Hammet? They who? Where? Found him dead or alive?”
“Very dead. In his car. It looks like he missed a turn and drove into a canal.”
“Shit! For real? When did they find him? Is there a time of death?” The earlier the better, as far as Malvone was concerned. He had wanted Hammet dead since they had climbed down from the unfinished building overlooking the stadium on September 9th, but this was not the way he’d planned it. Now Hammet was confirmed dead, but Garfield, Edmonds and the other two were still missing…it would take time to digest this information, figure the angles, and calculate all the permutations.
If Fallon and the others had escaped, and killed Hammet after forcing him to call Swarovski’s house, well he could deal with that. The expanding SPD needed real enemies; they could only gin up patsies for so long. But at least Hammet’s lips were now sealed forever, and that was all upside. There was no longer any chance of his worst fear ever being realized, which was George Hammet sitting in front of a grand jury, or a Senate committee.
“No time of death yet,” said Bullard. “Sounds like he’s in pretty bad shape, I heard the crabs got a good whack at him… Maybe he’s been there since Monday night, or Tuesday morning.”
“What do you think? Did he have help?”
“Hard to say. If he was Vince Fostered, they did a good job of it. They found a whiskey bottle in the car… I don’t know, maybe Hammet and Garfield just dicked it up and let Fallon or Sorrento take a gun off them… Or maybe one of them played possum and Hammet or Garfield turned his back on him… I don’t know.”
Malvone’s cell phone chirped and he took the call right there in the doorway. “Malvone here. Yes. Okay, that’s fine.” He listened for a half minute and concluded with, “I’ll be there.” He flipped the phone shut and dropped it back into his jacket pocket. “I’ve been called to Headquarters. Hammet’s unfortunate demise has gained their attention. That bitch of a SAIC at the Norfolk Field Office is pointing her finger at us. But Hammet never had anything in writing from us, not even an email. Anyway, it shouldn’t be a major problem, not with federal agents getting shot right and left. He’ll just blend right in with the rest. Garfield too.”
Silvari said, “They’ve just about wiped that ‘Fed List’ off of the internet, but it’s still out there. I mean, every wing-nut who ever wanted a copy of it probably downloaded it already, or got it from a friend.”
“Exactly. Agents are getting whacked every day, so Hammet winding up in a canal shouldn’t stand out too much.”
“Don’t be so casual about that Fed List, just because you’re not on it,” replied Silvari. “I’m on the list, a lot of us are! I mean, I have to sneak into the back of my own house, like a damn thief! Wally, you don’t know what it’s like, feeling crosshairs on your back every time you put the key into your door.”
“Yeah, I know, I know, it must suck. So, are you guys coming over tonight? You can unwind a little, and forget about that list.”
****
At noon they were all in the pilothouse eating sandwiches, when the bridge edged above the horizon and into view ahead of them. The Governor Harry W. Nice Memorial Bridge carried Route 301 high over the Potomac, connecting Virginia to Maryland at a pinch-point where the river narrowed to two miles wide and made a sharp left turn. Route 301 had been the primary highway linking the east coast states from Maine to Florida until the opening of I-95, when it had been eclipsed and almost forgotten except by local traffic. Now with the I-495 Wilson Bridge over the Potomac in Washington cut, Route 301 was once again a primary artery for mid-Atlantic travel. The Governor Nice Memorial Bridge, like an aging actor brought back on stage as a last minute replacement, once again stood tall in the spotlight.
They all watched the bridge grow before them through the forward pilothouse windows. Ranya said, “It looks like a dead end in the river. The bridge looks just like a locked gate.” Until recently the river had felt expansive and safe around them, seemingly almost as wide open as the Chesapeake itself. All morning the Potomac had been tending north west, with an average distance from shore to shore of about five miles, which was too far to clearly make out details on the land. Now the land was closing in on them from both sides. North of the bridge the river would average under two miles across, and their feeling of anonymity would be gone…if they made it past the bridge at all. She added, “That bridge looks like a real junk pile. I wonder how old it is?”
****
“Young lady,” said Captain Sam Hurley without turning around, sitting on his stool behind the wheel, “that bridge was built in 1940, and I remember it opening like it happened yesterday. The cars that drove across in those days, you can only imagine. Two of my cousins helped build that bridge; they were iron workers, high scalers! She may look like ‘junk’ to your young eyes, but she’s made of honest riveted steel, put up by brave men who knew their trades.
“She’s a real ship bridge, 140 feet over the water at the center span, and it’s two-hundred feet down to the bottom. As the river narrows here, it gets mighty, mighty deep. Imagine that, two-hundred feet deep, and they built her before the war! Now, that was a job.”
The elderly skipper stared ahead for a minute, blinking, remembering his cousins Arthur and Danny Maguire who died so very, very long ago. He remembered how they had worked as a team on projects around the bay and even up to Philadelphia and New York, putting in the red-hot rivets, and then hammering them into place forever. Another lost art, one of so many he had seen disappear from American life over his many decades.
The past, the past, all gone now…like Artie, who had not even made it to the beach on Guam in ‘44, and Danny who survived the war, but left four young children when he fell from the almost finished Chesapeake Bay Bridge in ‘52.
Including bright-eyed young Molly, who he raised as his own, taken by that damnable polio the summer after her thirteenth birthday…
Artie and Dan were both gone, long gone like the water down the river. But their high steel bridge remained before him, still joining Maryland and Virginia, an unbreakable testament to their lives.
“I’ll forgive you for calling that bridge ‘junk’ young lady,” said Captain Sam Hurley, his voice cracking. “You didn’t live in those days, and you don’t have any idea of how things were back then.” He didn’t turn around, so they would not see him weep.
****
They were all quiet after that, staring at the bridge with new eyes. It was more words than they had heard Captain Sam speak since they had left Norfolk. Except for Barney Wheeler who knew him well, they weren’t sure how much of what was going on around him their elderly skipper, with his snow-white hair, hearing aids and thick glasses, heard or understood at all. Now they knew.
They couldn’t see Chuck’s boat; it was too far away, one white dot lost among a dozen vessels ahead of them on the shimmering sun-lit river. They were listening carefully to the Molly’s VHF radio, bolted to the varnished plywood console in front of the steering wheel. It was set on channel 77 as the bridge steadily grew ahead of them. The rainbow arch of steel trusses and girders were an elaborate Erector Set toy bridge in the distance, with emerald forests and jade fields squeezing it from both sides.
Without preamble, Victor Sorrento’s voice hissed from the radio. “Bluebell, Bluebell, this is Harmony. How copy, over?”
Carson was standing near the radio and unclipped the microphone, and slowly pressed the transmit button three times. The message from the nonexistent Bluebell to the equally nonexistent Harmony was repeated again in a minute, and was confirmed again with three more clicks. This prearranged brevity code meant that Chuck’s Baycruiser had not been stopped, boarded or searched while passing beneath the bridge, so it was presumed to be safe for the Molly and her illegal cargo to proceed up the river. If the Baycruiser had been stopped and searched, or if special security procedures on the water had been noticed, a different message would have been sent. Then, the Molly M would have turned west for a marina in Colonial Beach, to transfer the weapons to Archie’s truck.
Another message came over on channel 16, the emergency and hailing frequency. “Securite, Securite. Hello all stations. The Coast Guard has established a security zone 500 yards on either side of the Governor Nice Bridge. All mariners transiting the Potomac are required to maintain their course and speed in the center channel, and not slow down or stop in the security zone. This is the United States Coast Guard, out.”
Barney Wheeler said, “It sounds like they’re transmitting on low power, so it’s only heard within a few miles of the bridge. Usually, the Coasties boom out their ‘Securite’ messages on high power, so you can hear them from one end of the bay to the other.”
“I think they’re playing it low key,” said Carson. “With the beltway bridge in Washington cut, you can be sure they’re keeping an extra watchful eye on this one. So I’m guessing they’re worried about sabotage, not gunrunning. At least, that’s what ‘maintain your speed in the center channel’ tells me. That’s why we’re going through now, when there’s the most river traffic: the more boats going through, the less attention they can pay to each boat. What I heard from my friend in Maryland is that the big clampdown on guns is further up. The DC beltway is the main perimeter for Washington; that’s where they’re checking everything that moves. Outside of the beltway, it’s just random FIST checkpoints.”
They all knew from their briefings and map study that Malvone’s house was six miles south of the beltway. Six miles from where one span of the Wilson Bridge had been blown up.
“I think you youngsters ought to get below,” said Wheeler. “The Coasties still might be doing random boat checks, and in my experience they’ll inspect a boat with a pretty girl on board a lot quicker than a boat load of ugly old reprobates like us.”
“That’s the sad, sad truth.” said Captain Sam. “I haven’t been boarded in more years than I care to remember. In fact, I can’t even remember the last time the Coast Guard came aboard the Molly M.”
Brad and Ranya needed no further coaxing to take their leave and disappear down into the cramped forward berthing compartment. The three older men remained in the pilothouse, to impress any young Coast Guardsmen with the harmlessness of their advanced years, and their utter lack of sex appeal.
From a mile out they could see a white-hulled Coast Guard patrol craft anchored on the upstream side of the bridge, partially concealed behind one of the enormous concrete islands supporting the complex steel truss legs.
As they approached the bridge at a respectable ten knots in the center channel, right between the red and green buoys, a day-glow orange rigid-hulled inflatable boat about twenty feet long made a high speed curving run from the Maryland shore and zoomed up their wake. It came alongside and paced them, just a half boat length from their starboard beam. The RIB was crewed by a half dozen young Coast Guardsmen in blue jumpsuits and orange life jackets, carrying slung M-16s and shotguns and holstered pistols. Two of them stood in the back of the RIB holding onto the side of the welded aluminum pipe frame radar arch, ready to climb across onto the Molly’s aft deck if they were instructed to do so. If the RIB’s coxswain wanted to send the boarding party over, he would simply press its orange port-side tube against the Molly M’s hull, while matching boat speeds.
Captain Sam had put on a blue Navy-style ball cap with “WW2 PT Boat Veteran” emblazoned in gold across the front. Beneath the words was embroidered the famous silhouette of the plywood patrol torpedo boat. Carson and Wheeler were sitting at the dinette table, which dropped them just below the line of sight from the RIB.
The Coasties, standing in their inflatable holding onto their bolster seats, peered in at Captain Sam through the Molly M’s plexiglass side windows, giving him a careful look-over. In return he gave them a friendly wave. After long seconds of expressionless study from behind his sunglasses, the senior petty officer waved back to him, spoke into his walkie-talkie, and then the orange inflatable accelerated away in a wide right hand curve, leaving a churning white wake behind them. The well-maintained Chesapeake Bay dead-rise workboat with the old skipper at the controls fit on the river like a hand in a glove, and obviously merited no further official attention.
They passed between the concrete islands on either side of the main channel and beneath the iron bridge. The vaulted arch soared momentarily above them from shore to shore and up to the sky, and then it was behind them and they were through. The upper Potomac, narrower now and twisting in several tight dog legs, lay open before them. They were 45 miles from their target when Carson sent coded messages to Chuck and Tony, who were somewhere out in front of them, and to Archie and Edith, who were shadowing them unseen on the Virginia shore. The Molly M had made it past the bridge, and the mission was a go.
****
Malvone arrived at the ATF Director’s outer office after passing through several new layers of security, including a pair of uniformed guards stationed outside the elevators. After being cleared to enter the waiting area and being announced by the director’s secretary, he was met by Deputy Director Frank Castillo, who was just coming out.
“Walter, let’s take this in my office. The Director is tied up.”
Tied up my ass, thought Wally Malvone. That preppie chicken shit doesn’t want a meeting with me to appear on his calendar, in case the Special Projects Division blows up into a flap. Well, screw him anyway.
They sat in the same office, in the same two plush leather chairs, across the same mahogany executive desk as before, but the furniture had been rearranged. Castillo no longer had his back to the large window, which was now covered by gauzy curtains. Behind the curtains a new two inch thick sheet of the latest high tech bullet resistant laminated plastic glass was crudely bracketed and bolted to the wall around the window opening. Even with the new layer of bullet resistant glass, Castillo was taking no chances. A fifty caliber armor piercing round had penetrated the Director’s conventional Lexan polycarbonate window a week before, and Castillo had no desire to test the advertised rating of the new material with himself as the target.
“Well, Walter, it’s been two weeks since you gave me your proposal…it sounds like you’ve really taken the ball and run with it. We’ve even heard from the White House about your unit.”
“Thank you, I’ve got a fine team behind me.” Malvone was glowing inside, but made an effort to appear bureaucratically passionless.
“Yes… I’m sure you do.” Castillo knew the records of the cast-offs and misfits that Malvone had assembled into his Special Training Unit, now the Special Projects Division, and why he had selected them. “And I understand you’ll be expanding soon… We’ve been instructed to provide you with every consideration in your selection of new personnel.”
Malvone could read the bitterness in Castillo’s brown eyes, in the strained tone of his voice. He answered, “We’ll try not to disrupt any current field operations.” This was a subtle joke, because they both knew that from coast to coast, ATF Field Offices were in total disarray and confusion. Even before the internet posting of the so-called Fed List, ATF agents were hunkering down and hiding, to avoid being an unseen sniper’s target.
“Walter, speaking of personnel, I’ve been getting some rather pointed questions out of the Norfolk Field Office about their ASIC.”
“Ahh…Norfolk? George Hammet, right? What about him?”
“Are you aware that he’s been missing since Monday, and he was found dead in a river down there just this morning?”
“I heard something about it, but not the details.”
“Norfolk seems to be under the impression that Hammet was working with the STU, informally.”
“Really? No, no, I’m afraid that their information is not correct. I believe Hammet was working with the Joint Task Force, and I think he may have assisted the STU indirectly with some of the informants he was running in Tidewater, but nothing more than that. Bob Bullard handles the day to day running of the team; I’ll ask him what he’s heard.”
“And that’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“Walter, the SAIC down there is pretty upset. Very upset. She wants to depose some of your men concerning their knowledge of Hammet’s recent activities and whereabouts. And she wants to depose Bullard, and yourself.”
This was getting Malvone’s attention: sworn depositions were not a good thing. He suppressed a wry smile and slowly shook his head no. “Frank, I don’t think that would be advisable, not at this time. The Special Projects Division is engaged in full-out counter-terrorist operations,” he lied, and then he dropped the biggest name of all. “They don’t have time to just stop what they’re doing. Anyway they can’t; they’re working directly under the President’s instructions. So I think we should forget about depositions for the time being.”
Malvone the poker player was enjoying himself tremendously, trying to guess what “cards” Castillo might still be holding after playing his high ace. He liked the new sometimes upside-down chain of command, but he needed to get a feel for exactly how far he could push his somewhat murky and undefined connection to the White House. Even with his new undeclared promotion, he was technically still junior to Frank Castillo, but he was in no real sense the Deputy Director’s subordinate any longer in the larger picture…for the moment.
Without saying so, they both understood that his new power flowed directly from his informal connection to the White House, at least for as long as their operations went well, and as long as the SPD wasn’t blamed for a major flap. In that event, if the White House threw him overboard, if there was blood in the water, then Castillo and Boxell and the other jealous sharks at ATF and the Justice Department would undoubtedly rip him to shreds. He was attempting to learn the unwritten rules as he went, and he found the entire game to be more than slightly entertaining.
“All right Walter, we’ve got enough problems this week as it is, without looking for any more in-house.”
“I agree, Frank.” Frank! Calling the Deputy Director “Frank” to his face in his own office was priceless. “On that we see eye to eye.” He could only imagine Director Boxell in his office, hiding under his desk, undoubtedly listening in on an intercom, chewing his fingernails down to the knuckles as he contemplated the prospect of another major ATF scandal.
Castillo leaned forward across his desk, rising slightly out of his chair. “Walter, I want to tell you…there’s a lot that I hear, but I don’t really know. A lot. So I just want to ask you for one thing, man to man.”
“What’s that, Frank?”
Castillo closed his eyes momentarily at the sound of his first name. “Don’t embarrass us.”
Malvone paused and stared back at Castillo. “Excuse me? I don’t know what you mean.”
“Walter…please. Just don’t embarrass us. Don’t embarrass the ATF.”
“I’ll keep that in mind, Frank. I really will.” Malvone got up out of the chair with an earnest look on his face, said goodbye and, without a backward glace, he strode out of the office. He was laughing inside, he felt like whistling, like dancing. With Hammet dead, his tracks were covered forever. Hammet’s death was going to be lost among the dozens of other deaths of FBI and ATF agents this month.
The brown-nosers who flocked around Boxell and Castillo at Headquarters could take their Ivy League graduate degrees, roll them up into tight tubes, and shove them up their asses. They meant nothing to him now. His years of pretending to fit in, of carefully biding his time while planning and preparing were over.
****
When Brad and Ranya eventually unlatched the cabin door and came back up to the pilothouse, there were no smirks or leers or winks. The three older men had lived a long time, and they knew that the young “newlyweds” might be able to enjoy no other honeymoon beyond the brief time they managed to steal together as the Molly M cruised up the Potomac.
“Where are we?” asked Brad, looking around at the shore. Stately mansions stood atop bluffs, on wide lawns amidst dense stands of hardwood trees. He was back in his comfortable camo pants and blue hooded sweatshirt, but he was barefoot. Ranya was in her new black warm-up suit, also barefoot, her long brown hair loose and unbrushed around her shoulders. Both of them had reddened and bleary eyes as if they had been crying.
Captain Sam had a yellowed and coffee-stained chart unfolded in front of him next to his controls. “Just passing Quantico,” he said. He stabbed at their position on the chart with a gnarled finger. He had a beaten up pair of black binoculars lying next to the throttle lever, and he used them to read the numbers on the green and red channel buoys, taking his glasses off and slipping them into his shirt pocket each time. Captain Sam had not entered the GPS era; the old buoys and markers and landmarks on shore did fine by him.
Carson and Wheeler were sitting across from one another at the dinette table, which was covered with maps, sketches and lists. Carson said, “We’ve got less than twenty miles to the target; we should go over the mission again. The primary plan, the alternates, the cover stories, evasion plans…everything. Is that all right, or am I being a pain in the ass?”
Ranya shrugged okay, and slid into the booth beside him. Brad squeezed in beside Wheeler.
“Instead of going over the whole briefing again, how about we ask each other questions? Okay? All right. Ranya, do you remember the first vehicle rendezvous point across from Tanaccaway Creek?” For now, they quit using their alias first names among the four of them. These four all knew each other, and they weren’t worried about Captain Sam.
“Number one is Dogue Creek Marina, between Mount Vernon and Fort Belvoir. The truck will be behind the restaurant.”
“It’s called Barnacle Bill’s,” said Wheeler. “My turn. Brad, what’s the closest Metro stop to Malvone’s house?”
“Huntington Station. Straight across the river, at the end of the yellow line. The last train leaves at 1:30 AM.” Brad asked Carson in return, “Hammet said Malvone doesn’t have any guard dogs, but what if he’s got them now? How do we deal with guard dogs?”
And so they continued peppering each other with questions about the potentially fatal minutia of the operation, as they wound their way up the river. They worked through every conceivable sentry stalking scenario, several possible ways to gain entry to Malvone’s recreation room, and a variety of escape and evasion plans.
Every fifteen minutes they heard Tony’s voice over the VHF, telling them in brevity code that the river was clear and free from security patrols. Edith, in the truck, used a new prepaid cell phone to send numerical mile marker codes to a new pager on Carson’s belt, indicating the truck’s position on the Virginia side, in case they had to make an emergency link-up.
Finally, Tony sent one last VHF brevity code indicating that as planned Chuck was increasing the Baycruiser’s speed to twenty knots, in order to deliver him to Malvone’s creek for his kayak recon.
The Molly M was fifteen miles from Tanaccaway Creek at four PM. As planned, they diverted from the main channel and headed south into the mouth of the Occoquan River, to top off her fuel tank at the Riverside Marina. If the Molly had to make a high speed run down the bay after the mission, they’d want every gallon of diesel they could carry to obtain the maximum range. Fully fueled, the boat would be able to make it non-stop to Guajira’s anchorage at its best speed.
Brad and Ranya gladly stayed hidden in the forward cabin during the refueling stop to make the Molly less memorable to the marina employees. Wheeler got off the boat and looked for another emergency extraction site where it would be easy to bring the Molly in close enough to shore for them to rendezvous with Archie’s truck. Carson paid for the sixty gallons of diesel with cash, wearing sunglasses and a ball cap. Long after they untied from the fuel pier and shoved off again, Brad and Ranya remained below in the forward cabin.