“Don’t worry about it, son — we’re grateful for any help.” Franklin showed him Cooper’s address and the PO whistled through his teeth. “Fancy. That’s south of Broad in the old town, where the tourists go and the rich folks live. Like I say, I can take you there but I can’t wait.”
Franklin held up his hands in surrender. “No problem — we can hook up with the local PD once we’re off base and take it from there.”
Franklin moved toward the passenger seat, leaving the back for Shepherd. He didn’t speak again until the car was rolling.
“Your staffing situation got anything to do with that floating traffic jam out in the river?”
“You got that right, sir. We’ve had unauthorized ships arriving here for the past twenty-four hours. The port authority is in meltdown. They’ve drafted us in to help deal with the situation but it seems to be getting worse. We put out a general call twelve hours ago advising all shipping that the port is now embargoed but no one seems to be taking any notice. They just keep on coming.” The PO eased out onto a broad boulevard lined with piles of graying snow. “Did you see the carrier when you came in?”
“Hard to miss it.”
“That’s the USS Ronald Reagan. It’s supposed to be out on patrol in the Atlantic but it showed up here about an hour ago. There’s all hell breaking loose over at command. They’re talking mutiny and all kinds of stuff.”
“Anyone spoken to the captain?”
“If they have, I don’t know about it. What I do know is that none of the ships — military or civilian — have responded to communications. We can track them coming in on radar so we know they’re headed here, but all attempts to contact them and divert them elsewhere have been met with radio silence. It’s like a fleet of ghost ships coming in to anchor.”
“What about the crews, they sick or something?”
“They’re all fine. Everything’s fine. There’s no engine failure or nothing like that. They get here, drop anchor and start disembarking. That’s why we’re short staffed, everyone’s on double duty trying to deal with all the paperwork. By rights all the military personnel should be arrested for dereliction of duty and held in the brig but we haven’t even got the capacity for that. The brig holds around three hundred men and it’s full already. There’re six thousand on the Reagan alone. We also got a cruiser and a destroyer out there and a coupla frigates heading this way. I heard talk they were gonna commandeer Fort Sumter out in the bay and use it as a holding pen, but then the National Park Service got all bent out of shape because it’s a civil war monument and all. You ask me, the whole thing’s a mess. A big crazy mess.” He shook his head.
Shepherd watched the PO’s eyes in the rearview mirror. They were edgy, flicking left and right, fixing on the road then checking the mirrors as if someone might be following them. His fingers tapped on the wheel as he drove, letting on that he was nervous or scared. “Can’t you send some of these ships off to another port, take the pressure off here a little?” he asked.
“Well, that’s the thing, sir — we got Kings Bay and Jacksonville south of here but they’re having the same problem. They got ships showing up there too.”
“Any port in a storm,” Shepherd muttered, looking out of the window at the frozen edges of the city as it started to snow again.
“What’s that, sir?”
“Nothing.”
“I tell you one thing.” The PO’s hands continued to drum anxiously on the wheel. “The one thing all the ships have in common.” He checked the rearview mirror one last time before whispering his secret. “They’re all American. American registered and American crews. And the funny thing is, when we interview the crews, and ask ’em why they put in here, they all keep saying the same thing: ‘We just needed to get home,’ that’s what they’re saying—‘We need to get home.’ ”
Home
That word again, taunting Shepherd with a meaning he had never really known. Outside his window the parking lots and business units of northern Charleston began to disappear as they headed downtown. The PO had been right about the traffic. Lines of cars packed solid with people and possessions, inching forward through the drifting snow. The vast majority of them were from out of state. Shepherd even spotted one with Canadian tags.
Shepherd’s phone buzzed and he checked the caller ID before answering.
“Hello, Merriweather.”
“I just heard about the explosion at Marshall. Is it true?” He sounded about as tired as Shepherd felt.
Shepherd glanced at Franklin before answering. “Unofficially, yes. We’re trying to keep a lid on it at the moment, though, so don’t repeat that to anyone.”
“What about James Webb? Was it badly damaged?”
Shepherd looked out of the window at the frozen city. “It was totally destroyed, or at least all the components in the cryo testing lab were.”
The phone went silent and Shepherd watched the lines of traffic slip by as the PO made good use of his lights and siren to thread his way through it.
“What about Professor Douglas?” Merriweather said. “Is he — was he?”
“He’s fine so far as we know. We haven’t found him yet. He wasn’t at the facility. We’re trying to track him down now. But no one was hurt, which is the only good news. Well, that and the fact that your job probably just got a little more secure. It will probably be cheaper to fix Hubble now than rebuild James Webb, so I guess every storm cloud has a silver lining.”
“Yeah, I guess.” He didn’t sound particularly happy.
Outside, the lines of cars thinned a little as they reached the older part of town with its grander, prettier architecture: Colonial-style mansions, Federal, Georgian — all sliding past behind a veil of snow like ghosts of the city’s history.
“How is Hubble — any change?” Shepherd asked, trying to lift Merriweather’s mood.
“Yes, actually there is.” He brightened a little. “It’s still pointing straight down to earth but at least it hasn’t started losing altitude or something worrying like that. If anything, it appears to be settling into a new orbit.”
“What about Taurus, anything new appearing there?”
“Not that I know of but I’m a bit blind at the moment. I’ll do some asking around with some people I know with telescopes that still work.”
“Thanks, Merriweather. I appreciate it. Try and get some sleep.”
“Ah, sleep is overrated. I can sleep when I’m old.”
Shepherd smiled. “Take care, Merriweather.” He hung up.
The tires rumbled as they hit the old cobbled roads built with discarded ballast stones from British sailing ships when Charleston was part of its expanding empire.
“Take a right over there,” Franklin said, pointing to a turn up ahead, “otherwise you’ll get caught up in the one-way system.”
“You been here before, sir?” the driver said, making the turn.
“Coupla times.”
They were in the heart of the tourist district now and every store served either food or nostalgia. The driver slowed as they passed a mule-drawn carriage with a few brave tourists huddled in the back, heads down against the driving snow, looking back to where the harbor was framed at the end of the long street. You could just see the ships through the snow, clustered together in the same waters where sails once billowed and cannons boomed as the British were driven out.
“Here you go, gentlemen.”
The Crown Vic turned a corner and pulled up to the curb by a classic redbrick Charleston single house with chocolate brown shutters framing tall sash windows. Bright lights burned inside, making the windows glow, and steam rose from a vent in the basement. On the street level two broad steps led up through an arch to an iron gate that served as the front entrance. A Christmas wreath was hanging above a rectangle of polished brass with THE CHURCH OF CHRIST’S SALVATION engraved on it.