Black Water Transit (27 page)

“I was supposed to be seeing a friend. Before I left. I’ve been waiting for …” He did the math and realized he’d fallen asleep in the interview room and the bastards had just left him there, chained to a ring in the floor. “I’ve been here for hours. His name is Raleigh Johnson.”

“Hours. Hear that, Buster?”

Buster’s face in no way registered anything more complicated than a broadband low-level threat that came off him like the hissing heat off a steam-pipe radiator. He reminded Jack of a buffalo bull calf, a bad one. Jack held Buster’s eyes for much longer than he had to and saw Buster’s eyes begin to flicker. It was like blowing on hot coals. Face him directly in any way, he’d go off like a Roman candle. Callahan saw the silent exchange of mutual dislike and laughed.

“Now now. Play nice, fellas. Jack, they feed you?”

“No. Nothing.”

“Damn. Sadistic little shits, aren’t they? We’ll get you something once we’re clear of the city. Can you walk?”

“Raleigh Johnson. Can you get in touch with him?”

“If you’re talking about a big old blond buck who looks like he used to play football, he’s sitting on a bench out in the hallway for as long as we been here, anyway. You supposed to talk to him?”

Jack managed to keep his tone civil, but he felt like drop-kicking the woman through the open doorway behind her.

“Yes. I am. He’s my business partner.”

“You been arraigned, right?”

“Yeah. I have been well and truly arraigned.”

“We’ll see what we can do. Come on now.”

They rearranged his shackles, left the leg irons on the floor behind him, Jack now cuffed only at the wrists to a
steel chain that ran around his waist. They went down the long hallway toward the steel-barred exit gate. Beyond it, in the portcullis area, Jack could see a white van parked under a blue-white yard light, no markings of any kind on it. It was big and blocky and looked like an armored car.

Callahan tapped Buster on the shoulder, nodded toward the door marked
Visitors
, and walked Jack down the hallway to the gate. There was a bench there, beside a Coke machine and some guard lockers. A turnkey inside a glass booth was leaning back in a big stuffed chair and watching a black-and-white television.
Law & Order
, as it turned out, one of Jack’s favorite shows up until recently. Being dragged up a flight of concrete stairs by a couple of bad-tempered prison guards jerking on your wrist shackles tends to fog up your clarity about concepts like law and order. Callahan sat him down on the bench and stepped back, studying him, her arms folded across her flak jacket, her hip cocked.

“You the one they popped for the gunfight over at Red Hook?”

“No.”

“No? They told me you were all over that!”

“They told you wrong.”

“You look the part. A gunfighter. Ever been in a gunfight?”

“Yes.”

“Yeah? Where?”

“Vietnam.”

“In that, were you? What was it like? The gunfight.”

“Unpleasant. I don’t recommend them.”

“Maybe. I guess you’d know. We’ll have to see. I joined the marshals because I always wanted to be a famous gunfighter, and they got me stuck in prisoner transport. Been at it for eleven years. Never fired a shot in anger. Hate my job. Hate my partner too. Buster has no bounce at all. He’s
from Nigeria, used to be in the police there. His real name is In-gwu-mee something. I can’t pronounce it, so I call him Buster. He has a bad eye. Mean. You seen it too, I know you did. God only knows what evil things he’s done back there in Nigeria. But now he’s a U.S. marshal, because we seem to need more black U.S. marshals. I don’t know why. You need to pee, Mr. Vermillion?”

Jack did, but he was damned if he was going to let her help him. Or some Nigerian psycho named Buster. She read his expression.

“Oh hell, don’t you worry. I got no mandate to assist you in pecker deployment, Mr. Vermillion. And Buster would take it as a personal insult, we ask him. Like to slice it right off and eat it raw. There’s a washroom right in there. You go on in. Have a good long one. There’s no way out but back this way.”

Jack stood up, let her undo his wrist shackles, and was about to go into the washroom when he heard a shout from down the hall. He turned and saw Creek Johnson striding down the hallway, his face white as bone, his eyes fixed, Buster following hard. He reached Jack and pulled him into an embrace, but Callahan and Buster stepped in and jerked him back.

“You got ten minutes, Mr. Vermillion,” said Callahan. “You, sir, we said no physical contact. We search all our prisoners before we put them in the van, remember. Thoroughly.”

Creek stood rigid, waiting for the guards to back away. Jack saw that Creek’s eyes were wet and his face looked haggard.

“Jack, what the hell they doing to you?”

“You talk to Flannery?”

Creek waved that away. “That son of a bitch! I think he thinks you’re guilty. He’s sniffing around a goddamn plea bargain!”

“There’ll be no plea bargain. I haven’t done a damn thing.”

“Jack, they’re taking over Black Water. The whole package. Including the accounts. Going to try, anyway. What should I do?”

“You get down to the offices right after you leave here. You got the keys? Computer codes? The entry cards, all of it?”

“Yeah. Greco hasn’t got her order yet. I still have it all.”

“Then you get up there and you take over Black Water.”

“Take it over?”

“That’s right. You’re my partner. You and I started this thing. You have a legal right. You haven’t been charged with anything?”

“No. Not a thing. They’re laying this all on you.”

“Fine. Then you get in there and you run the damn thing. Business as usual. You call Dave Fontenot, you call all of our clients one by bloody one, you tell them whatever they need to hear, answer every question, then you go down to the loading docks, you call everybody together, tell them we are by God still in business and nothing changes. Get the trucks out, get the boats moving, get the day going. Just like always.”

Creek was staring at him, his face going through changes. When Jack finished, his face was harder, his eyes dry.

“What do I say about … all this shit?”

“Tell them we’ve been set up, that I’ll beat the charges. Tell them the truth. Be short but be straight. Don’t let them think we’re worried. Take the high ground all the way.”

“Yes. Damn. The high ground. You’re right. What happens to you? Where they taking you?”

Jack filled him in, the “protective custody” stunt, the night run to Allenwood Prison in central Pennsylvania.

“Where the hell is that?”

“Somewhere near Harrisburg. They call it Club Fed.”

“Okay. I’ll be there the first of the week.”

“No. No, you can’t leave the Black Water offices. You bunk there, in my office. The whole weekend. There’s a bathroom, and a daybed in the closet. You live there. If you’re physically on the site, if you’re acting as CEO, then I don’t think they can seize the whole operation out from under you. Not unless they indict you too, and they haven’t, right?”

“Not yet. What about Martin Glazer, those people at Galitzine Sheng and Munro? The pension fund?”

“Call Glazer. See what he says. My call is, you won’t get through. But try. That shows due diligence. If you do get through, then it’s business as usual. But I doubt you will. It’s hard to make big moves when the CEO’s in prison.”

“Man, they’re really fucking with us, aren’t they? The pension fund is a promise to our own people. This could bring the Teamsters back at us. They’re killing us.”

“Well, let them try. We’ll beat this. Something else. I need you to talk to our good friend.”

Creek’s eyes widened and then he recovered.

“I hear you. The whole thing?”

“Yes. Somebody’s fucking with us, and I don’t think Flannery has the balls to find out who. Tell him the whole story.”

“Okay. I can talk to Carmine.… Jack, I …”

Creek’s eyes looked empty. Jack had never seen him like this.

“Hey, Creek, don’t go all touchy-feely on me, okay?”

“It’s not that. Jack, there’s some things that went on.…”

“What things?”

Creek hesitated, looked away.

“Creek, did you have anything to do with getting a Cobra? Is that it? I know you’re into cars. You can tell me.”

Creek’s face went white, then red.

“What the
fuck
are you saying? Jesus, I never—”

Callahan heard Creek’s angry tone, stepped up.

“That’s it, Mr. Johnson. Time to leave.”

Creek sent her a sideways glare, looked back at Jack.

“Look, if they get their seizure order, you’re gonna be out of cash. I can help you. I got some put aside. Separate. I can back you.”

“Creek, this could get very expensive.”

“We’re … partners. I can fix this.… I can help.”

Silence came down again. Callahan took Jack’s arm and Buster stepped in close, separating Creek, edging him back.

“Time to go, cowboy,” she said, locking on his chains.

The portcullis gate was heavy and when it opened it made a sound like an anchor chain running crazily over a huge steel bow and dropping away into cold deep water. Jack never looked back, but he felt Creek’s eyes on him all the way to the van sitting white and cold under the hard blue light. He reached the van, his shadow before him, and saw the black outline of a big man with chains hanging from him, and the hard blue light made the bright stainless-steel chains glitter. When they slammed the door shut on him, the van rocked and the portcullis walls echoed with the force of it.

Callahan was behind the wheel as the box van cruised up the ramp and out through the portcullis gate. The federal yard was lit by cold blue street lamps and cut into hard black shadows. The street was empty as they pulled out of the yard. Buster lit himself a Kool,
made it a ceremony, leaned down to hunt for a radio station, and didn’t notice the big white Lincoln, windows tinted black, that was idling in a cross lane, waiting for them. Pike gave them a full city block before he moved out into the street and followed them south toward the highway. He was tired now, and hungry, but there was no time for rest. Payback first.

He’d broken off from the city cops after Peekskill and headed north when he heard that they were arraigning Jack the same day. He knew they’d be taking him to a federal pen, and he needed to be there when they left. He put on a Duke Ellington CD and settled into the soft black leather, shifted his body to ease the old familiar pain of the five round scars across his belly.

A Robert Frost line ran through his head.
For I have promises to keep. And miles to go before I sleep
. He said it to himself a few times as he trailed the big white van, until it seemed to blend in with the lazy grace of Duke Ellington’s big brass section. Once they reached the interstate, he dropped back. They were going south and west. That probably meant Allenwood Prison. If they reached it.

Nicky was lying on Casey’s bed in her apartment at Temple Court, trying not to listen to the shouting and screaming going on out in the living room. Casey had a desktop PC on her dresser table. Nicky found the CD-ROM that Pete LeTourneau had given him, the one with the combat weapons data file. He pushed it into the CD
slot and hit enter. The screen flickered and flashed and showed him a search slot. Nicky typed in
M82A1
, hit search. In a few seconds he got the words, and he got the picture.

The weapon was huge, brutal, and undeniably heavy. The M82A1 was a .50-caliber military sniper rifle. A big, blocky, and brutal-looking killing machine. There was a body of text along with the picture of a massive bolt-action rifle. It read like a rave review.

There was a tab on the page that said
See video?

Oh God … why not?

Nicky clicked on the tab, and a video clip began to run on his computer screen, with a bad sound track attached. A laconic male with a Texas accent on the voice-over reported that the video was made during the Gulf War. It showed a unit of U.S. Army Rangers that had penetrated the Iraqi forward lines at some nameless location in the endless Iraqi desert. The picture was grainy and the camera often seemed handheld, so the image was sometimes a little shaky.

The unit had set up the Barrett on a cleft of rock at the eastern edge of a dry wash with a long view down a barren rocky valley toward a thin black highway that may have been the road to Baghdad. The camera took a position to the right and rear of the fire team, four men in desert camo, whose faces were never shown. The camera had a Telephoto lens and must have been, at that stage, tripod-mounted or braced on a rock, because it zoomed smoothly in on a small black dot moving slowly across the desert, perhaps a mile away. The air rippled and danced like a waterfall and the vehicle—an Iraqi staff car, judging from the flags on the hood—seemed to be rolling over a thin sheet of glass, probably a heat mirage.