The Cyclops Conspiracy (31 page)

On the bridge, Fairing pointed to something in the water. “There! What’s that?”

Oliver craned his neck. A small boat drifted in the dark, rippling water.

“It’s the Quigley’s boat. It must have come loose from the pier,” Oliver said. He called down to Zanns to explain what they’d seen.

“Check it out,” she commanded.

Oliver spun the large, stainless-steel helm and headed toward the small craft bobbing in the water.

Jason waited until the yacht was fifty yards away before climbing out from under the dock for a third time. Where were his brother and Waterhouse? What was happening in the middle of the river?

The yacht headed for the small johnboat. Then
Vengeance
appeared to swallow the tiny vessel whole. Minutes later, the yacht towed the boat as close to shore as it could. Fairing hopped onto the craft and heaved the anchor overboard. After climbing back aboard, the yacht sailed away.

A shudder, not caused by the October chill, ran through him. Did Zanns have his brother and Waterhouse?

He slipped quietly into the water and swam. Two minutes later, he pulled himself over the gunwale of the small craft.

The johnboat was empty.

He scanned the vessel. No blood. No equipment. No clothing. Jason struggled to his knees and looked toward the James River Bridge. The
Vengeance
had passed under the drawbridge, and was dwindling in size with each second.

Jason sat on the middle bench, his clothing and shoes heavy with water. A slight breeze blew across the water as guilt clutched him by the throat. He—and he alone—had dragged his brother into this affair. And now his brother and another man were either dead or soon to be.

Get moving!
he told himself
.
They must have been taken aboard the yacht. He would follow and figure out how to help Peter and Waterhouse.

Jason moved to the engine, renewed by conviction and desperation.

He knelt and tugged at the cord. Nothing. For three minutes, he tried unsuccessfully to start it.

Finally, he slammed the plastic cowling covering the engine. “No!”

Jason paused to rest, hoping he hadn’t flooded the carburetor. Then, in the distance, he heard water splashing. Quiet ruled for thirty seconds as Jason listened. Splashes mingled with another noise. Gasping breaths.

“Jason!” a voice whispered between splashes. “Jason!”

“Pete, is that you?”

“Get your ass out here and help me! This mother’s heavy.”

Jason nearly shredded the cord when he pulled it. The engine sputtered, caught, and puffed oily smoke. He turned the throttle wide open and pressed the choke closed. He whirled the boat in the direction of his brother’s voice.

Jason found Peter thirty yards away, side-kicking an unconscious Waterhouse to shore.

“He’s breathing, I think,” Peter gasped, as they pulled him into the launch.

Back at the pier, they laid Waterhouse on the creaking planks.

Jason thrust two palms down on Waterhouse’s belly, forcing water to dribble from his mouth. Peter turned his head to the side as Jason leaned on his stomach again. Waterhouse sprayed a plume of water and lurched into a coughing spasm, sucking in short, gurgling breaths.

“He’ll be all right,” Jason said. “Man, am I glad to see your ugly mug. I thought they took you—or worse. What happened?”

“We had to dive off the boat when the yacht approached. We were underwater for a long time. He wanted to surface,” Peter pointed to Waterhouse, “but I had to hold him under or they would’ve seen us. He sucked in some water. And passed out on the swim back.” Peter’s chest heaved with each sentence. “Damn, I’ve got to quit smoking,” he said.

“Is the device in place?”

Peter nodded, still trying to catch his breath.

“We need to get out of here. You got enough left to carry him to the truck?”

“No, I don’t.” Peter smiled at Jason, then at the unconscious Waterhouse. “He’s going to walk.”

The sound quality was passable. Ambient noise, combined with the creaking of chairs and the shuffle of papers and clothing, obscured patches of conversation at times. The three men sat in the SUV, dripping wet, listening to the real-time conversation on the
Vengeance
. Waterhouse had tuned the car radio to the listening device’s frequency. The signal on the miniature microphone had a range of miles. The private investigator was holding a palm-sized recorder he’d pulled from his glove box up to the car speaker to capture the conversation.

The first hour held nothing but stray noises interrupted by snippets of inconsequential conversation. The hum of the engines could be heard. Words or phrases came and went as people walked in and out of range. An hour later, the engines died. The yacht had stopped.

Zanns voiced came over the speaker.
My children…is the final package…our source inside the Beltway…

There was a rustling, closer to the microphone. A creak. Someone sitting in a chair, perhaps. Lily Zanns’s voice came through loud and crystal clear at the moment.
If the package contains the requi…
formation…have a green light for our operation. The plan…so carefully and patiently waited for…

The next words seemed to be spoken by Zanns, though it was hard to determine. She was speaking in a guttural dialect, and it wasn’t French. Jason and Walter understood none of it.

One phrase jumped out at Peter.

Allahu Akbar!

The other voices joined what sounded like prayer recital. More rustling. Plastic crinkled.

Zanns in English this time.
Torpedo and Thunderbolt will fall in the poison wind of the Simoon! Allahu Akbar!

A pause in the chanting caused the speakers in the car to fall silent. Waterhouse glanced at Jason in the front seat and Peter in the back.

“Who are Torpedo and Thunderbolt?” Jason asked.

“What’s Simoon?” Peter said.

Waterhouse shrugged.

“They all must belong to this Simoon,” Peter said more to himself than to his two car mates.

Torpedo and Thunderbolt will fall…

“They’re planning to kill again,” said Jason.

“Not again,” Waterhouse corrected him. “I think the murders of Torpedo and Thunderbolt seems to have been their objective all along…”

Conversation began again.

The seating chart and itinerary are set. Everything is a go. Cooper has taken possession of Cyclops and will set it up in the condo…target the white screen. Sam…in the north tower. Jasmine will be in her location on the other north tower…
The last words were drowned out by a noise inside the cabin of the yacht.

“Cooper’s involved!” Jason said out loud. Peter and Waterhouse did not know who Steven Cooper was. “But what the hell’s a Cyclops?”

Peter shrugged. “Not a clue.”

A man’s voice began, concerned, rigid.

“It’s Fairing again,” Jason explained. He was the only one who knew the sounds of their voices.

Will Jason Rodgers…eliminated…his team?…obstacles to our success.…too risky leaving…the police…We should have killed him like we did Pettigrew!

The final burst of conversation came through so clearly, it was as if Fairing were sitting in the vehicle. A thousand knife stabs of fear pricked Jason’s body.

Enough! Rodgers may already…no longer a threat…the decision has been made. As for the rest of his team, Hammon’s assassins…care of them. They will commence their assaults…focus on the task…”

Jason started to speak. Waterhouse shushed him.

“
What about the escape r—”

The woman’s voice, Kader’s, was cut off midsentence. The sound just stopped. Nothing was coming from the speakers, no static, no hissing, nothing.

“Well piss on me and tell me it’s raining,” Waterhouse swore. “The microphone failed.”

Tentacles of fear and guilt engulfed Jason. The air around him seemed to collapse with the pressure of a thousand atmospheres. Breathing was no longer automatic. The three of them, and Christine, were marked for death. Jason was responsible for the mortal danger each of them found themselves in.

Zanns, Kader, Fairing, and Oliver had planned all along to murder two people. It was going to happen soon. But when? They called them Torpedo and Thunderbolt. Codenames, no doubt. Who were they? The names meant nothing to him, Peter, or Waterhouse. But for some reason, Jason sensed he’d seen them before.

Jason had once heard you never really forgot; your mind just wasn’t able to access the information. The names “Torpedo” and “Thunderbolt” had passed before his eyes at one time, fragments of data on the hard drive of his mind. But he couldn’t remember from where.

“We’re marked men,” said Peter.

Hammon, another codename probably, was sending killers after them. They thought they were too close, knew too much. If Zanns only knew how little he actually understood.

“I’m sorry I’ve dragged you two and Chrissie into this,” Jason said. “A lot of people are in danger now.”

“These people have killed before and they plan on killing again,” Peter said. “Our families could be targets. I have to get Lisa and the girls to a safe location. Jason, you need to call Jenny and tell her what’s going on. Michael isn’t safe.” Peter ran a hand through his spiked hair. “You need to warn Christine too.”

“You think they’d be after her?” asked Waterhouse.

“She knows what we know,” Jason said. “She was in your house when we were talking about what we found. Your house was bugged.”

Peter looked to Waterhouse. “What about you, Walt? Is there anyone you need to call?”

“My daughters live out west and my ex-wife is living in New England. That’s it.”

“Sorry about your bad luck,” Peter said. “We better get moving. We’re going to see a lot of shit go down—if we live that long.”

Jason mashed the bell four times in rapid succession. He waited five seconds and pushed six more times. After a third round of bell-pushing, shuffling could be heard coming from behind the door.

“Hold on!” Christine hollered.

“It’s Jason. Open up now!”

The door opened a crack, revealing a sleepy set of brown eyes.

“We need to talk.”

“Now?”

Jason pushed through the door past Christine. “It’s a matter of life and death.”

“You do realize what time it is, don’t you?”

“Where’s your computer?” he asked, ignoring her comment.

“How’s Sheila?” she asked, her tone petulant and mocking.

“We’ve got more important issues right now.”

“By the way, why did you invite her to Maggie’s Tavern when you were having dinner with me? If I’d known, I would’ve worn some body armor.”

“I didn’t invite her. I don’t know how she knew. Where’s your computer?”

“You woke me up at four in the morning to use my computer?”

“Where is it?”

“It’s upstairs in its case, next to my bed, where I should be.”

He held up a plastic CD case. “You’re going to find this very interesting.”

“Is this going to take long?”

Jason leaned closer. “Get…your…computer.”

Christine went upstairs and returned with her laptop.

Jason’s eyes never left the screen as the CD loaded. “We made this recording of Zanns, Fairing, and Kader on her yacht tonight.”

“How did you get on the yacht?”

“That’s not important right now. Listen!” Jason skipped ahead to the incriminating parts. Christine listened in silence then asked, “Who are Torpedo and Thunderbolt?”

“Keep listening. We’re still trying to figure it out.”

We should have killed him like we did Pettigrew!

He stopped the playback.

“They did it! Chrissie, Zanns and her people murdered your father!”

Her mouth hung open. “No,” she said. “No, it can’t be.” She lowered her head, then jerked it up to look at Jason. “Lily did this?”

“Yes.” Jason grasped her hand.

“He found one? A conspiracy?” Tears welled in her eyes.

“Yes, he did.”

Christine stood fully erect. She paced the full length of the kitchen, then turned around. “I never believed him. I ridiculed him!” Christine gently banged the table with a closed fist. “Never in a million years…”

“There’s more,” he said. Christine listened as Zanns and her cohorts discussed the elimination of Jason, Christine, Peter, and Waterhouse.

“She’s going to kill us?”

He nodded. “Not without a fight. But she’s going to try. We’re all taking precautions. You need to get to safety!”

Christine asked, “How did it all come to this? Why are they trying to kill these two people?”

“I don’t know. Something massive is going down, and we’ve got to stop it. You need to go into hiding until we can get a handle on this.”

“Hiding? Where am I supposed to go?”

“I don’t know, don’t you have a girlfriend out of the area you can stay with?”

“I’m sure I do.” Christine thought for a moment. “But I’m
not
going into hiding.”

“What? Why? Chrissie, that’s insane. These people already killed your father and Douglas Winstead. Whatever they’re planning, they’re not going to stop until whoever is in their way has been eliminated. You could be next! You have to leave,
now
!”

“I can take care of myself.” Chrissie’s eyes held a determination which dwarfed her stubbornness.

“These people are professional killers. They may already be on their way over here—”

“I have a life here! I can’t just leave my job. This is where I live.”

“It could also be where you die.”

She leaned in, her lips no more than two inches from his nose. She emphasized each word, as Jason had a few minutes earlier. “I’m…not…going!”

Jason slammed the steering wheel. F-bombs flew about the Saturn in unison with the thumping of his fist against the hard vinyl. He railed against her stubbornness and stupidity. The harder he’d pushed Christine to leave, the more forcefully she’d pushed back. How could she be so naïve? How could she not see the danger? Thomas Pettigrew had been just as stubborn throughout his career. It had made him successful. Chrissie came by it honestly. Reluctantly, Jason left. He didn’t know how he would do it, but he’d figure out a way to get her to safety.