Dead or Alive

  “Where the hell are they going?” Jack asked. The park was bracketed on two sides by water. “They just traded the sun and surf capital of Virginia for this.”

  “Doesn’t feel right,” Clark agreed.

  The Salims reached the far edge of the park where it formed an arrowhead between the beach and Jefferson Avenue. As they watched, the girl got out a camera and started taking pictures—not of the ocean but across the highway.

  “The cargo terminal,” Clark muttered.

  They’re doing reconnaissance,” Clark told Hendley and the others over the phone an hour later. They’d just followed the Salims’ Intrepid back to the hotel; now they sat on Atlantic Avenue, a block away, where they could see every car coming and going. “The Newport News Marine Terminal. What exactly they’re interested in, we don’t know, but they took dozens of pictures.”

  “Any military ships berthed there? Chemicals, fuel depot?”

  “Nothing,” Clark said. “Already checked. Mostly box ships with dry cargo. We’ve been on them since this morning. Aside from the pool and the terminal, they haven’t gone anywhere, and no one’s come up to their room.”

  “If they’re scoping out targets,” Granger said, “this could go on for weeks. We’re not really set up for extended stakeouts. I say we tip the FBI and let them have it.”

  “Give us another day,” Clark said. “If nothing pans out, we’ll pull the plug and come home.”

  At the Claridge Inn in Saint George, Utah, Frank Weaver was showering off a day’s worth of grime and looking forward to a Law & Order mini-marathon on TNT when he heard a knock on his door. He wrapped himself in a towel and padded across the room. “Who is it?”

  “Front desk, Mr. Weaver. We have a problem with your credit card.”

  Weaver unlatched the door and opened it a crack. The door flew open and banged against the wall. Two men stepped inside, one shutting the door, the other taking two quick strides at Weaver, who began backpedaling across the room but not fast enough. He felt something hard pressed against his solar plexus, then felt a hammer blow, then another. He felt himself falling backward. He bounced once on the edge of the bed, then rolled to the floor on his back. He lifted his head and looked down at his chest. Just below his sternum, two pencil eraser-sized holes were bubbling blood. The man who shot him walked forward and stood over him, one leg on either side of his chest. Frank Weaver saw the gun’s muzzle lowering toward his face, and he shut his eyes.

  83

  THE SALIM SIBLINGS left the hotel at nine p.m., and almost immediately Jack and Clark realized they were retracing their earlier route to the Newport News Marine Terminal. In Portsmouth they turned off the highway and drove to a U-Haul Storage on Butler Street. Clark kept going past the entrance, turned onto Conrad, shut off the headlights, then did a U-turn and pulled to a stop ten feet short of the intersection.

  Down the block, the Intrepid had pulled into the parking lot and stopped beside the first row of storage units. Citra Salim climbed out and trotted up to a unit, which she opened with a key.

  “Don’t like this,” Jack said. “What do two kids on vacation need with a storage unit?”

  “No good reason,” Clark replied.

  Citra was back out. She closed and locked the unit, then returned to the Intrepid. She was carrying two small canvas backpacks.

  Within minutes they were back on the highway and headed into the bay tunnel. Once through to the other side, the Intrepid continued to retrace the afternoon route, ending up once more at King Lincoln Park. They didn’t pull into the parking lot, however, but drove past it, then turned right onto Jefferson and headed back in the same direction.

  “Think they made us?” Jack asked.

  “No. They’re just careful. We’re okay.”

  They were in an industrial-park area: trucking companies, gravel suppliers, scrap yards, and boat repair shops. The Intrepid took another right.

  “Twelfth Street,” Jack said. “Heading east again.”

  Clark let them get a little farther ahead, then shut off his headlights, made the turn, and pulled to the curb. Three hundred yards down the road, the Intrepid was turning left into an apartment complex.

  “Visiting new friends?” Jack wondered.

  “Let’s find out.”

  Clark turned on the headlights and pulled out again. As they drew even with the apartments, two figures walked out of the parking lot and started down the sidewalk. The Salims. With their backpacks. Clark passed them and looked in the rearview mirror. They were heading back toward Jefferson. Clark turned the next corner, stopped again, headlights off.

  “See them?” Clark asked.

  “Yep, got ’em.”

  At Jefferson, the Salims crossed the street and disappeared down a grassy median behind a trucking company.

  “Time to move,” Clark said.

  Lights still off, he did a U-turn and rolled down Twelfth to Jefferson. As they reached the intersection, they saw the Salims turn left and disappear behind the trucking company’s fence.

  “They’re running out of room,” Jack said. The trucking company backed up to 664, a raised, four-lane highway.

  “Let’s hoof it,” Clark said.

  They parked, got out, and trotted across the street to the grass median. At the rear of the trucking company, they found a marshy creek bordered by thick brush and a narrow trail. They were halfway down it when Clark realized where they were. “It’s the Six sixty-four canal. Remember to the right, as we came out of the tunnel?” They’d seen dozens of motor yachts and speed-boats berthed in the canal.

  Down the trail, an engine gurgled to life. Clark and Jack sprinted forward. Fifty yards away at the end of a dock, the Salims were sitting in a speedboat. The boy sat down in the driver’s seat and eased the throttle forward. The boat pulled away from the dock and headed into the canal.

  Jack and Clark were back to their car a minute later. They pulled onto Jefferson and headed south. After a few blocks, the canal came into view through the passenger window. They could see the Salims’ boat motoring toward the mouth of the canal.

  “They’re going for the terminal,” Clark said.

  “What about the harbor patrol?”

  “Jack, once they get around the jetty, they’re a quarter-mile from the first berth. We’ve got five minutes, if that.”

  Clark did a U-turn and headed in the other direction.

  They crossed under the 664, turned south onto Terminal. At the bottom of the ramp the road forked at a tank farm. Clark veered right and followed the winding dirt road. Halfway down the tank farm, Clark braked to a stop. A hundred yards away was a lighted guard shack. A swinging gate blocked the road.

  “Shit.”

  “Marshal’s badge get us through?” Jack asked.

  “Once inside, yeah, but main gates switched to TWIC in January—Transportation Worker Identification Credential. You don’t have one, you don’t get in.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Rainbow had an E-Six devoted to keeping up with ID protocols,” Clark replied. “Bad guys are all about going where they don’t belong. Figure out what they’re trying to counterfeit, you’re halfway to figuring out what they’re targeting.”

  Clark backed down the road, arm draped over the seat as he steered through the back window, until they reached the fork. He veered left and pulled into a gravel turnaround beside the tank farm’s fence.

  “Back on foot,” Clark said.

  To their left, on the other side of the tank farm, they could hear the traffic rushing by on the 664. To their right, across the dirt road, was a dirt berm overgrown with underbrush. They jogged over and up the embankment, then pushed through the foliage, then down the opposite slope. They found themselves in a scrub field about the size of a football field. At the far end, they could see the guard shack they’d spotted earlier. They sprinted across the field, up another slope, and through some brush, and ended up on a dirt road. To the left lay a dirt parking lot with rows u
pon rows of boxcar-sized shipping containers and two Quonset huts. Clark and Jack were down the road and among the containers thirty seconds later. They stopped to catch their breath, then kept going.

  They picked their way through the rows of containers to the edge of the parking lot. Two hundred feet away were the docks, three of them extending into the harbor, with a ship berthed on each side, for a total of six.

  “A lot of open ground between here and there. And a lot of damned lights. Looks like a stadium. Which ship?”

  “Just a hunch, but I’d say the one that’s not unloaded yet.” He pointed at a box ship berthed on the far right. Bulktainers crowded the foredeck. “Can you make out the name?”

  Jack squinted. “Losan.”

  Three hundred yards away, Citra and Purnoma Salim were pulling their boat alongside the pier beneath the stern of the Losan. “You’re sure this is the one?” Citra whispered.

  “I’m sure. Here.” She took the backpack and donned it.

  Purnoma reached out, grabbed the steel maintenance ladder, and knotted the bow line to upright. He steadied the boat, and his sister started up the ladder. When she reached the top rung, she extended her arms above her head, snagged the bowline, then swung her feet up and hooked her ankles in place. Once she was halfway across, Purnoma followed. They were on deck a minute later.

  “There should be no more than two crew members aboard. You take them, and I’ll head for the tanks. When you’re done, let me know and I’ll start.”

  Remember, act like you belong and you do,” Clark said, then stood up and walked into the parking lot. Jack followed. A trio of men smoking outside one of the Quonset huts were watching them. Clark raised his arm. “Hey, guys. How’s it going?”

  “Okay. You?”

  Clark gave an exaggerated shrug. “Another day, another buck-fifty.”

  The men laughed.

  Clark and Jack kept walking, leaving the parking lot and walking down an alley of tractor trailers. They emerged on the wharf and turned right, passing the ships. They reached Losan’s pier.

  “Can’t be this easy,” Jack muttered.

  “Don’t jinx it, boy.”

  They turned left down the pier. Fifty yards away, they could see that the Losan’s accommodation ladder was down, the base resting a few feet off the pier.

  “They gonna have a guard?” Jack wondered.

  “Watch, Jack. In the maritime world, we call them ‘watches.’ We’re about to find out.”

  They started upward, their feet softly pinging on the steel treads. At the top, the rail gate was open but blocked by a length of cable. Clark unclipped one end, and they stepped through. To their right, forward, an arch led to the foredeck; to the left, the weather deck stretched to the stern. The bulkhead was broken up by three hatches. Clark drew his gun. Jack did the same. They headed for the first hatch, quietly undogged it, then swung it open. From belowdecks came what sounded like two Ping-Pong paddles being slapped together. Clark mimed a gun with his hand, and Jack nodded.

  A second shot.

  Then, from the foredeck, the soft beep-squelch of a radio or a push-to-talk cell phone.

  Clark pointed at himself, then pointed down the ladder, then pointed at Jack and pointed to the foredeck. Jack nodded, and Clark disappeared inside.

  Jack took two steps down the deck, then stopped. His heart was pounding. He took a calming breath. Switched his gun to his left hand and wiped his palm on his pant leg. Easy, Jack. Breathe. Just like Hogan’s Alley. Of course, it wasn’t just like that, and he knew it, but he did his best to push the thought to the back of his mind. John will be fine; don’t worry about John. Focus on what’s in front of you. ... He kept walking, one careful pace at a time, his gun up in a two-handed grip, leading him down the deck, scanning the superstructure above his head. He reached the foredeck arch. Stopped. Corners were hell, Dominic and Brian had told him. No cop likes corners. Never jump a corner, Jack reminded himself. Take a peek, get a picture, then pull back.

  He did that now, peeked and pulled back. To his left was a wall of steel forty or fifty feet tall. These were the bulktainers, Jack realized. Four to a stack and twelve abeam. Their front edges abutted the raised lip of the forward cargo hold. Jack peeked again, this time scanning the deck forward of the hold. He was about to pull back when he saw a figure dash from behind the other side of the bulktainer stack and kneel atop the hold hatch. The figure started undogging hatches. Once done, he cranked the hatch open a foot or two, then sprinted out of sight again.

  From the starboard side, there came the squeal of a hatch opening, then closing. Footsteps clicked on the deck. Now murmured voices. Jack stepped out and slid down the bulkhead to the bottom bulktainer. He crept to its front, peeked around the corner. Nothing.

  Then a ping, and another, then another. It took Jack a moment to place the sound: feet on steel ladder rungs. Jack looked up. A few feet above his head was a ladder rung. What’re you up to, pal? One way to find out. He reholstered his gun, then grabbed the bottom rung and started climbing. At the top, the next bulktainer’s ladder was offset by a foot and a half, so Jack had to reach sideways, grab the next rung, and let his feet swing free.

  He heard something below him and looked down. Though the deck was too dark to see her face, Jack recognized Citra Salim’s long black hair. She raised her gun. Jack let go of the rung with his right hand and went for his gun. Off balance, he swung sideways even more. Citra’s muzzle flashed orange. Jack felt something white-hot rake along his jawline then thunk into the steel beside his head.

  From the other side of the bulktainer, a man’s voice: “Citra?”

  Jack tried for his gun again, but knew, even as his fingers touched the butt, it was too late.

  Dumb to go this way, he thought.

  Behind Citra, a figure stepped through the arch. John Clark took one quick stride, raised his gun, and shot Citra in the back of the head. She pitched forward to the deck.

  “Citra! Are you there?”

  Jack pointed to the port side. Clark nodded and started moving that way. Jack pressed his hand to his cheek; his fingers came away bloody. No gushing, he thought, which was good. He started climbing again, moving from the second level to the third.

  Halfway up the side of the uppermost container, he stopped, drew his gun, and kept going. At the top he paused. To his left, the pilothouse windows and eaves overhang were three feet above his head. He peeked over the lip of the container.

  Four cylindrical propane tanks, stark white in the darkness, sat side by side, two each fore and aft. Five containers away, Jack saw a dull silver object sail through the air and clatter into his container. Jack craned his neck, trying to locate the object, when he saw a sputtering yellow glow beneath the forward edge of one of the tanks.

  “John!”

  “Here!”

  “He’s got something, a bomb, a grenade ... something.”

  Another object arced up into the air. This time Jack got a better look at it. Pipe bomb. Jack boosted himself up onto the lip of the container, then sidestepped to the front and began edging across the containers, heel to toe. On the starboard side, he saw Clark’s head appear above the container’s rim.

  Balanced on the front rim, Jack peered into each container, gun tracking for movement. Another pipe bomb arced through the air and clattered into a tank. Then another.

  He leaped to the next tank, teetered, then regained his balance and leaped again. His foot slipped, and he slammed chest-first into the fourth container’s rim. On the starboard side, Clark was up on the rim and coming to meet him.

  “Fuses are going, John,” Jack called.

  He pushed himself up, hooked his leg on the rim, got to his knees.

  “You see him?” Clark called, taking a step.

  A torso popped up in one of the containers, fired a shot at Clark, then ducked out of sight again.

  “Fuck it,” Jack muttered, and started running, arms extended like a tightrope walker’s. He was crossing the si
xth container when Purnoma Salim appeared over the rim of the eighth tank and tumbled into the next. Then he was up again, turning toward Clark, who was in mid-leap between two rims. Purnoma raised his gun. Still running, Jack brought his own gun around, left arm still extended for balance, and started firing, trying to keep the sites on center mass. Purnoma went down. Jack stopped firing. Two containers behind him, there came a crump. The container stack trembled. Crump.

  “John, get off!” Jack yelled, and kept running.

  Crump.

  The rim shifted beneath Jack’s feet, and he stumbled sideways into the container. He saw the white curve of a propane tank rushing up to meet him. He turned his body sideways and took the impact on his arm and shoulder, then slid down the curve and found himself pinned against the container wall.

  Somewhere in the terminal, an alarm Klaxon sounded.

  “Jack?” Clark yelled.

  “I’m okay!”

  He heard a hissing sound. Looked around. Directly below him, from beneath the bottom edge of the tank, he saw a yellow glow. Aw, shit.

  “John, move, go!”

  One tank over, another crump.

  Jack rolled onto his back and sat up, then rolled again so he was straddling the tank. He stood up, looked around. Nowhere to go. Fifty-foot fall on all sides, the nearest ladder another twenty feet away. Pilothouse. Jack sprinted down the tank, then leaped. He grabbed the overhang, swung his leg up, hooked his ankle, then chinned himself and rolled onto the pilothouse roof.

  Crump.

  Jack rolled over, looked down. From inside the tank came the sounds of sloshing. The odor struck him. His eyes started watering.

  “John!” he shouted.

  “Yeah, port side!”

  “You smell that?”

  “Yeah. Move your ass.”

  Jack got up, sprinted across the roof, found the superstructure ladder, then started down. Clark was waiting at the bottom. Jack asked, “What the hell is that?”