Why?
The smoking gun. The killer weapon.
Jesus. They’ll fry me.
Damn, the body was heavy. The limp feet dragged on the chipped concrete of the dock head.
He should just call the cops, explain his way out of this thing. AMDI sent a hired killer, after all.
The door squeaked.
McCory looked up and saw a handsome, well-dressed man with a long gun standing in the doorway.
The gun moved, and McCory didn’t even think. He pushed the body away and fell down, squeezing the trigger twice.
And then he had two bodies.
His first reaction was to abandon everything and run for the truck. He’d successfully hidden himself and the Kathleen from the insurance company for years. He’d do it again.
Then he pulled the other body out of the doorway, closed the door, and locked it. He shoved the Browning into the waistband of his jeans. Though he felt as if he might gag, he knelt beside the body and patted the pockets until he found a wallet and a passport.
Francisco Cordilla? Who in hell is Francisco Cordilla? My God, they’re coming out of the woodwork.
There was nothing to identify him beyond a Spanish name and address in either his wallet or passport. He was carrying a lot of money, both U.S. and Spanish bills.
Leaving the bodies sprawled on the dock head, McCory went back to the SeaGhost, stumbled inside, and got himself a Dos Equis from the refrigerator. He sat in the banquette and took deep breaths and deep draughts of the dark ale.
Time slipped by jerkily, the minutes racing, then dragging their feet.
Christ, call the cops, you jerk.
An AMDI assassin would strengthen McCory’s case against the company.
Or would it? AMDI was just trying to get its boat back, and its repo man was iced by the thief.
Who was the other one?
He thought about the bodies.
Looked at his watch.
Didn’t want to touch the bodies. Not again.
Had to do something.
And McCory finally decided to go chase Ibrahim Badr. He had worked out a feasible plan earlier in the day. He needed to make an early start, though, before Ginger caught up with him.
Ginger.
Thinking about her forced him into action. She might show up at any moment. Taking one last gulp from the bottle, he went up to the dock and devoted ten minutes to loading the bodies back aboard the SeaGhost. He laid them out, side by side, in an aft corner of the cargo bay, then tossed a tarp over them.
He would drop them over the side on his way north. At the moment, it didn’t seem as if he had anything else to lose. He could devote his whole being to the task of running Badr down.
McCory activated the instrument, radar, and sonar consoles. He started the engines.
Climbing back to the dock, he went to the front of the building and shut off the lights. The interior lights of the SeaGhost, in the standard white mode, appeared spooky through the bronzed windows. A white glare from the open hatch bathed the side dock.
He walked out to the end of the dock and raised the sea door by hand.
Heard the deep gurgling of a V-8 marine engine.
It sounded suspiciously like Camrose.
While he stood there, the bow of his aged Chris Craft nosed inside the dry dock.
Mimi Kuntzman said, “Hi, there, Kevin!”
Ibrahim Badr had not thought that he would see the Chesapeake Bay Bridge ever again, and in reality, he did not see it clearly. It was very dark, and the skies were hung with low clouds.
Through the windshield, the bridge lights were visible, as were the unceasing strobe lights that warned aircraft. In the video monitor, it was a ghostly structure that quickly passed out of the camera’s vision as the Sea Spectre raced beneath it at fifty knots.
To the north were the running lights of several ships moving up the bay. Amin Kadar had identified their passive sonar signatures as those of medium-sized commercial craft.
“Twin screws, three thousand meters, almost directly ahead of us,” Kadar said over the intercom.
Badr turned the boat slightly to the right but did not decrease speed. He was becoming very confident of the Sea Spectre’s ability to go where it wished, invisible to the normal world. They were, in fact, proceeding head-on in the middle of the outbound traffic lanes, hugging the southern coast. He did not think the Coast Guard would stop him for that illegality. The lights of Virginia Beach gleamed through the left-hand windows like the well-rubbed beads of a tangled set of worry beads.
Ahead were the lights of the Hampton Bridge. Like the bridge behind them, very little traffic moved on it at this time of the morning. In the magnified bow video, he counted seven pairs of headlights.
Then the running lights of a naval vessel. Perhaps a frigate of some kind. It passed a kilometer to their left as he circled wide around it.
There were no alarms, not a visible alert aboard the ship, nor excited radio messages. Kadar had set the radios to the frequencies used by the Commander in Chief of the Atlantic Fleet, and though they frequently heard messages or intercepted telex traffic, both forms of communication were now indecipherable. Someone had realized that the Sea Spectre could eavesdrop and begun to employ some code. Kadar had been unable to make sense of it but felt assured that most of the warships were still searching for them far to the south.
It was the Christian Sabbath, an appropriate day to launch his largest offensive yet, Badr thought. He would wreak upon the Atlantic Fleet headquarters the same kind of chaos the Japanese had delivered to the Pacific Fleet headquarters in Pearl Harbor on another Sunday.
Once the bridge was visible in his rearview screen, Badr reduced his speed to fifteen knots. The telltale whiteness disappeared from the wake.
The U.S. Naval Shipyard passed on his left, and he turned left around its point, moving into the Hampton Roads. There were ships of various descriptions and unknown purposes anchored in the Roads. He ignored them and concentrated on the naval base on his left.
When he reached the confluence of the Lafayette and Elizabeth Rivers, fighting to join the James River, Badr slowed and reversed the boat, heading back to the north.
The lights of the naval base were now on his right, sleepy and peaceful.
Unexpectant.
“Omar, you may proceed.”
“I am using electro-optical targeting,” Heusseini said. “Missile bay doors opening.”
“Missile bay clear,” Rahman reported.
“Raising launcher.”
Badr advanced his throttles until the readout on the panel displayed fifteen knots. He would attempt to hold that speed, moving north back into the Roads, then around the peninsula and east toward the Hampton Bridge as Heusseini launched missiles steadily. Kadar was back in the cross-passage with Rahman, prepared to reload the launcher as quickly as possible. They had settled on twelve missiles.
Badr did not know what land-based defenses were available to the Navy here, but he suspected that within minutes of the first impact, the many naval ships in the area would be alerted.
Their position would easily be determined as the missiles launched. Still, in the four minutes required for reload, he could dart to another location and perhaps disappear for a few moments.
The risk was high, but the rewards were immense. Already, his successful attacks on American continental bases had created consternation within the populace. And in a society that so heavily depended upon justice being served, not to mention a society that was so certain of its definition of justice, his escape would infuriate them further.