The Art of War: A Novel (30 page)

I dragged him out from under the car. Doc and Willie helped me put plastic ties on his wrists and ankles and gag him with a strip of duct tape.

Willie ran back to the van and backed it up. I told him when to stop. Doc and I picked up the guy and threw him in the back. Then we looked around. No one seemed to be watching. “We got him,” I said on the net.

Doc retrieved the silenced pistol and the guy’s suitcase and tossed them into the van. Then he closed the rear doors.

“All you guys get out of here,” I said on the net. “See you tomorrow at the office.”

Got mike clicks in reply.

“Go up to the Benz,” I told Willie. He got behind the wheel and moved the van.

I took a last look around. Blood on the pavement. It would wash off when it rained again. Blood always washes off.

Willie climbed between the seats and took a look at our patient. “He’s bleeding,” he said to me.

“Put a tourniquet on that arm,” I told him. “Use a plastic tie. Make it tight.”

“So why did he come runnin’?”

“There’s a bomb in the Benz and he thought I was going to find it.”

Indeed, six minutes later I saw it with the optical tool. It was wedged near the firewall, with a trip wire taped to the front of the hood. With the hood almost down, there had been just enough room for him to work. Looked like five or six sticks of dynamite. Of course, if I had just lifted the hood all the way …

We would come back, disarm the bomb and install a new battery in the Benz later. We would also pick up the bomber dude’s ride to see what we could learn from it.

I shoved the last of my gear in the van, climbed in and pointed at the distant exit from the lot. Willie put the van in motion.

The bomber was writhing in the back, moaning softly. He was hurting bad. I figured he was going to be hurting a lot worse pretty soon. I threw a blanket over him so the woman in the tollbooth wouldn’t get a shock.

I put on my seat belt, sat back, took off the tactical headset and mike. Yawned. Snapped on the radio to drown the moans. Willie had it tuned to a DC rock station. The whanging of an electric guitar, insane drumming and incomprehensible lyrics matched my mood.

“Well, come on, Tommy. Gimme some cash for the parking lot tab.”

I dug out my wallet.

Truth is, I felt pretty good. Better than I had all week.

*   *   *

Choy Lee was in love. He wanted to spend the rest of his life with Sally Chan. But he was a Chinese spy, monitoring American fleet movements, which seemed fairly innocuous in and of itself. He had told her months ago that he was an early retiree from Silicon Valley, which explained his income and his hobby, fishing. If he got married he could always keep up the deception, of course, until his control transferred him or ordered him home. Then he and Sally could drop off the edge of the planet into the beating heart of America.

However, the addition of Zhang Ping to his station worried him. He had reported every ship movement for months, without fail, and then came Zhang. Was he about to be ordered home? What if he proposed to Sally and she accepted? How would Zhang take it?

Now he and Zhang were spending every day in the new boat cruising around Hampton Roads, drift fishing, trolling or anchoring near one shore or the other and fishing. Fishing, fishing, fishing. Actually he fished and Zhang sat in the captain’s chair in the little cabin and used binoculars, by the hour.

Today the temperature was in the mid-fifties and there was a twenty- to twenty-five-knot wind blowing under a high overcast that blotted out the sun. Zhang’s laptop was in a stand near the helm, beside the radar scope and GPS. Earlier, when Zhang went to the head, Choy had examined it. A wire with a USB plug ran from the computer to a power outlet to keep it charged. There was another USB plug, too, and the wire for that ran into the console. Choy figured Zhang had wired it up one evening when he and Sally were in bed at a Virginia Beach motel. He wondered where it went. He didn’t get to dig around to find out. When he heard the head flush he moved noiselessly back to his fishing rod and was reeling in to check his bait when Zhang came up the small ladder from the cabin.

As Zhang searched with binoculars, Choy thought about Sally. She was American to the core. Choy’s occupation would horrify her. Her father’s parents had fled China when the Communists were on the verge of victory and come to America. Her father had been born here and had served in the army during the Vietnam War. Her mother was a fifth-generation American from California. Both of them hated Communism and believed in the American dream with all their hearts. So did Sally. She had made that crystal clear on several occasions when some liberal commentator or politician on television spewed an elitist, anti-American viewpoint. “Crap,” she called it, and changed the channel.

So what was he going to do? If he turned himself in to the FBI, perhaps he would eventually be released, and then he could marry Sally. She might forgive past sins, but she would never continue their relationship if she knew he was an agent of the Chinese military. Never. And he thought too much of her to try to keep his occupation a secret.

He felt a bite and set the hook. “Got one,” he called to Zhang, who put down his binoculars and asked, “Should I move the boat?”

“I don’t think so. It isn’t that big.”

After a ten-minute fight he brought the fish to the side of the boat. It was a rockfish, fifteen or sixteen pounds. He used a gaff and hauled it into the boat. Big, but no record. The biggest rockfish ever hauled out of this bay was over sixty pounds.

He turned, grinning like a fool at Zhang, who looked amused.

“How about that?” Choy Lee roared in English. Wait until Sally heard about this!

He put the fish in a cooler near the outboard motors that also contained ice, and sat down in the enclosed little bridge where Zhang was, out of the wind, to warm up and have a beer. Beer was one of the things he liked about fishing, even in December.

He would take the fish to Sally at the restaurant this evening. Maybe she and her father could cook it the Chinese way. He almost invited Zhang to come share it, then decided not to.

Zhang turned back to the radar scope. Two container ships were to the east, heading north for Baltimore. Another, a bulk carrier probably full of coal, was in sight coming down the bay, headed for the entrance to the Atlantic. Over by the mouth of the Elizabeth River a destroyer was coming out. When she was broadside to them heading east, Choy could just make out the number on the hull: 109. That would be DDG-109, USS
Jason Dunham.
He called out the name to Zhang, who merely nodded that he had heard. He was examining her now with binoculars.

Why was Zhang in America, here in Norfolk? His presence meant something, but what?

CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN

War is hell.

—William T. Sherman

It was a few minutes after midnight when I called Jake Grafton. Checked on Willie’s phone to see that he was home—looked like they were out or in bed, but I rang his house anyway. Woke him up.

He showed up at the lock shop at a quarter past one.

I was sitting in the front of the shop checking my notes when I saw Grafton park out front. I unlocked the door for him, then relocked it when he was inside.

“You got him, huh?” Grafton said.

“He’s in back with Willie. Been jabbering his head off. I wrote it all down if you want to read it to save time.” I told him about Travis, Doc, Willis and Pablo.

Grafton went through the door from the shop to the workroom. We had our bomber spread-eagle on the floor with a work light in his face. We had been manipulating his arm below the crushed elbow socket. The wound was swelled up to about the size of a grapefruit, and blood was leaking out. The pain, I imagine, was excruciating. The assassin stood it a while, then tried to answer questions to get us to stop. That worked for a bit, but when he wound down we would have to stimulate him some more.

Grafton took a long look at the guy. The odor of shit and piss didn’t seem to bother him any. He kicked Fish’s foot so he would open his eyes.

“What happened to his elbow?”

“Car ran over it. Doc Gordon hit him from behind. He was shooting at me. He must have figured that I would find the bomb in my Benz.”

“How bad is the elbow?”

“Bones on both sides of the joint are crushed, I think. They’ll probably have to amputate. See his fingers? No circulation. They’re turning black.”

“But he’s still alive,” Grafton said with a sigh. “That’s good. I might think of a few more questions. Do you think he’s been telling the truth?”

“He did some lying there for a while, but we got those kinks straightened out.”

“These fingerprints on the last page?”

“His. He wasn’t in any shape to sign his name, so we put ink on his fingers, left hand, and he signed with those.”

Grafton gave me a look, then went over to the workbench, where we had Fish’s stuff laid out. Looked at the pistol with the silencer, at the suitcase, which only held two bricks to give it heft, and at his cell phone and keys, which were on a ring. He picked up the phone, played with it a bit and pocketed it.

Then the admiral sat down in the only chair and rearranged the lamp over Fish so that he could read my notes. I turned up the volume of the shop radio so that Fish wouldn’t be burdened by our conversation. “Tomazic, Reinicke and Maxwell. And Anna,” Grafton muttered. “Put the bomb in my place…”

After a bit Grafton said, “So this is why you saw him at Dulles.”

“He was coming back from Seattle. Did that job out there with a car bomb. He really gets off on car bombs.”

Grafton read on. A couple of times he glanced at Fish, who was enjoying the respite from excruciating pain. No doubt his whole arm hurt like hell, but nothing like it did when I twisted his lower arm or stood on it or kicked it. Then he about jumped out of his skin. He screamed and screamed. Fortunately our little shop was in a strip mall and the tenants on both sides had gone home for the night. There was no upstairs. Willie checked the alley behind from time to time. Fish could scream his lungs out if he wished.

Actually I had to go easy on that arm. If I had really tugged and twisted, I think the lower arm would have separated from the upper arm; the socket looked that bad. Then it wouldn’t have hurt anymore. Then I would have had to use a hammer on the left one and start all over. But I didn’t have to do it. Fish got positively garrulous. He even volunteered things, which was hard to believe. Yet I saw it happen.

Grafton was studying the meat of the revelations. Who gave Fish his targets, whom he had seen in Seattle, where he got his dynamite and fuses, how much he was paid, numbers for contacts, where he lived, where he kept his money, where his weapons were, who he had killed since the day he got out of diapers until this evening, all of it.

“So this Chinese guy, who is Kerry’s control, called him and sent him to Seattle?”

“So he says.”

“His name?”

“He doesn’t know it. The guy mentioned Kerry, called her a mutual friend.”

Finally Grafton asked the stupidest question I’d heard in years. “Did you read him his Miranda rights?”

“Oh, sure,” I said. “I carry a card in my wallet. Willie heard me.”

“Good.”

Grafton went back to my notes. Finally he folded up my sheets of paper and put them in his pocket.

“What do you want me to do with him?” I asked.

“Well…” Grafton considered. He didn’t glance at Fish. “I’ll make a call or two.”

*   *   *

Jake Grafton went through the shop, made sure the outside door wouldn’t lock behind him, went outside, got out his cell phone and called Harry Estep at home.

After eight rings, Estep answered the telephone.

“Jake Grafton, Harry. Sorry to wake you up.”

Estep grunted.

“We’ve got a little problem that you can help us with. We’ve got the guy who killed James Maxwell. Among others. Our problem is what to do with him.”

A long silence followed. Finally Estep said, “Jesus Christ. How’d you do that?”

“He planted a bomb in Tommy Carmellini’s car at Dulles Airport. He was waiting around to see Tommy get blown up. Tommy and a few friends got him first.”

“Has he talked?”

“I’m going to reserve that for the time being. He’s in bad shape. A car crushed his elbow while they were trying to capture him. I’m afraid he needs to go to a hospital. I want you to send some people you trust to arrest him under a national security warrant and see that he is guarded around the clock, held incommunicado, available to no one.”

“I hope you haven’t fucked this up so we can’t use his testimony in court.”

“You know better than that, Harry. I doubt if he’ll say a word without his lawyer by his side. Your guys can read him his Miranda rights and all that. Still, we’re going to have to keep a serious lid on. If you like, I’ll brief you tomorrow. As it is, he needs to go to a hospital.”

“Who is it?”

“Goes by the name of Fish. His real name is Peter Vega. He’s a professional assassin.”

“Where is he?”

Jake gave him the address of Willie’s Lock Shop.

“Vega, Vega. Is he Hispanic?”

Grafton sneered into the phone. “Damn if I know.”

“Okay. Take him to Walter Reed. I’ll get some people over there within an hour.”

“Carmellini will run him over there.” The irony of that remark was not lost on Grafton. “Come over to Langley about eight. I’ll buy you breakfast.”

“I know you’re not telling me everything.”

“Of course not. Eight o’clock. My office. See you there.”

Jake hung up and went back into the lock shop.

Carmellini was sitting near Fish, not looking at him. The man was on the floor, moaning.

*   *   *

“Take him to Walter Reed,” Grafton told me. “The FBI will have some people there to meet you. They’ll arrest him and guard him around the clock. After the doctors get done with him, we’ll jail him. Might need him later to tell his tale again. If he will. If he won’t…” Grafton sighed. “He’ll be a one-armed assassin, assuming that someday the country gets back to normal. And assuming someone hasn’t permanently shut his mouth before that happy day arrives.”