“Right. But I’m not going to be the guy who sticks his dick in the fire to see how hot it gets.”
“Then let’s go home.”
I pulled back on the road, and after a minute or so I said, “Okay, where are we going?”
She directed me to Montauk Highway, heading west, then south toward the water.
The road ended at a fenced-in area with a chain-link gate and a guardhouse. My headlights lit up a sign that read UNITED STATES COAST GUARD STATION-CENTER MORICHES-RESTRICTED AREA.
A uniformed Coast Guard guy with a holstered pistol came out of the guardhouse, opened the gate, then put up his hand. I stopped.
The guy approached, and I held up my Fed creds, which he barely glanced at, then looked at Kate, and without asking our business, he said, “Proceed.”
Clearly we were expected, and everyone but me knew our business. I proceeded through the open gate along a blacktop road.
Up ahead was a picturesque white-shingled building with a red-dormered roof and a square lookout tower; a typical old Coast Guard structure.
Kate said, “Park over there.”
I parked in the lot at the front of the building, shut off the engine, and we got out of the Jeep.
I followed Kate around to the rear of the building, which faced the water. I looked out over the floodlit installation, which was set on a point of land jutting into Moriches Bay. At the water’s edge were a few boathouses, and to the right of those, a long dock where two Coast Guard boats were tied to pilings. One of the boats looked like the one that had participated in the memorial service. Other than the guy at the front gate, the facility seemed deserted.
Kate said to me, “This was where the command post was set up right after the crash.” She continued, “All the rescue boats came in here through Moriches Inlet and deposited the debris from the crash, then it was trucked to the hangar at the Calverton naval installation to be reassembled.” She added, “This was also where they took the bodies before they went on to the morgue.” She stayed silent awhile, then said, “I worked here, on and off, for two months. I lived in a motel nearby.”
I didn’t reply, but I thought about this. I knew a few NYPD men and women who’d worked this case day and night for weeks and months, living out of a suitcase, having nightmares about the bodies, and drinking too much in the local gin mills. No one, I’m told, came away from this case without some trauma. I glanced at Kate.
We made eye contact, and she turned away. She said, “The bodies… pieces of bodies… kids’ toys, stuffed animals, dolls, suitcases, backpacks… a lot of young people going to Paris for summer study. One girl had money stuffed in her sock. One of the rescue boats fished up a small jewelry box and inside was an engagement ring. Someone was going to get engaged in Paris…”
I put my arm around Kate, and she put her head on my shoulder. We stood there awhile looking out over the bay. This is a tough lady, but even tough people get overwhelmed sometimes.
She straightened up, and I let her move away. She walked toward the dock and spoke as she walked. “When I got here, the day after the crash, this place was about to be closed down and wasn’t being maintained. Grass as high as my waist. Within a few days, this whole place was filled with commo vans, forensic vans, ambulances, a big Red Cross tent over there, trucks, mobile morgues… we had portable showers to wash off the… contaminants… About a week later, they put in those two paved helipads out on the lawn. It was a good response. An excellent response. I was really proud to be working with these people. Coast Guard, NYPD, local and state police, Red Cross, and lots of local fishermen and boaters who worked day and night to find bodies and debris… It was amazing, really.” She looked at me and said, “We’re good people. You know? We’re selfish, self-centered, and pampered. But when the shit hits the fan, we’re at our best.”
I nodded.
We reached the end of the dock, and Kate pointed to the west, toward where TWA Flight 800 had exploded over the ocean five years ago this night. She said, “If it was an accident, then it was an accident, and the Boeing people and the National Transportation Safety Board and everyone else involved in aircraft safety can fine-tune the glitch, and maybe no one else has to worry about the center fuel tank exploding in flight.” She took a deep breath and added, “But if it was murder, then we have to know it was murder before we can look for justice.”
I thought a moment, then replied, “I’ve looked for murderers when almost no one thought a murder had been committed.”
“Any luck?”
“Once. Things pop up years later. You reopen the case.” I asked her, “You got something?”
“Maybe.” She added, “I got you.”
I smiled. “I’m notthat good.”
“What’s good is that you can look at this with a fresh eye and a clear mind. We all lived this case for a year and a half until it was closed, and I think we were overwhelmed by the scope of the tragedy, and by paperwork-the forensic reports, conflicting theories, turf battles, outside pressures, and the media frenzy. There’s a shortcut through the bullshit. Someone needs to find it.”
In truth, most of the cases I’ve solved were a result of standard, plodding police work, forensic reports, and all that. But now and then, solving a case had to do with the lucky discovery of the golden key that opened the door to the short path through the bullshit. It happens, but not in a case like this.
Kate turned away from the water and looked back toward the white Coast Guard station in the distance. Several lights were on in the windows, but I saw no sign of activity. I remarked, “Pretty quiet here.”
She replied, “It’s winding down again.” She added, “This place was built at the beginning of the Second World War to hunt for German submarines lurking off the coast. That war is over, and the Cold War is over, and the TWA 800 crash was five years ago. The only thing that would keep this place alive would be a terrorist threat or an actual attack.”
“Right. But we don’t want to manufacture one.”
“No. But you’ve worked in the Anti-Terrorist Task Force long enough to know there’s a real threat out there that neither the government nor the people are paying attention to.”
I didn’t reply.
She said, “You’ve got the Plum Island biological research lab not far from here, Brookhaven National Laboratory, the Groton Naval Submarine Base, and the New London nuclear plant across Long Island Sound.” She said, “And let’s not forget the attack on the World Trade Center in February 1993.”
I replied, “And let’s not forget Mr. Asad Khalil, who still wants to kill me. Us.”
She stayed silent a moment and stared off into space, then said, “I have this feeling that there’s an imminent threat out there. Something far bigger than Asad Khalil.”
“I hope not. That guy was the biggest, baddest motherfucker I ever came across.”
“You think? How about Osama bin Laden?”
I’m bad with Arab names, but I knew that one. In fact, there was a Wanted Poster of him hanging at the coffee bar in the ATTF. I replied, “Yeah, the guy behind the attack on the USS Cole.”
“He is also responsible for the bombing of a U.S. Army barracks in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in November 1995, which killed five U.S. soldiers. Then, in June 1996, he was behind the bombing of the Khobar Towers apartment complex in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, which housed U.S. military personnel. Nineteen dead. He masterminded the U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998, which killed 224 people and injured another five thousand. And the last we heard from him was nine months ago-the attack on the USS Cole in October 2000, which killed seventeen sailors. Osama bin Laden.”
“Some rap sheet. What’s he been doing since then?”
“Living in Afghanistan.”
“Retired?”
Kate replied, “Don’t bet on it.”
CHAPTER SIX
We began walking back toward the Jeep. I asked Kate, “Where to now?”