Dead of Night df-12 Read online

  A name was on the card preceded by a single word: ETERNALIZE.

  When “Executive action” became part of the public record, another euphemism became requisite. “Eternalize” was a good choice. Spoken or written, it could be INTERNALIZE, a typo, or something misheard.

  Always give yourself an out.

  Next to the pistol was a SATCOM telephone, government-issue. SATCOM is a satellite-based wireless communications network with a sophisticated scrambler system. You can speak freely.

  I’d kept the thing locked in my lab, but finally stored it here because I found its distinctive bonging chime irritating. The chime was suggestive of a clock in a British drawing room at high tea-very civilized.

  The stuff I’d discussed on this phone was anything but civilized.

  When I touched the power button, I was relieved that it had some juice. I punched four more buttons, and, a moment later, heard Harrington say, “I knew you’d come crawling back. I hope Parker didn’t have to slap you around too hard.”

  “A sweet guy like him? I was just telling your gorilla-sized delivery boy what a fine man you are. But he seems to think you’re an asshole. Which he’ll tell you himself… if his jaw doesn’t have to be wired shut.”

  Harrington snorted, but was already done with small talk. “I have a couple of interesting jobs. Or have you decided to go ahead and pop your buddy?”

  My buddy. The name on the card.

  A great many years ago, when Tomlinson was a very different man, he’d supposedly been involved in something that had caused the death of some good people. Tomlinson had regretted it ever since-in fact, it had done a lot to make him the man he is today-but certain people had never forgotten. Harrington, for one. Who better to even the score than Tomlinson’s best friend? But I had delayed-delayed, hoping that it would all blow over. With Harrington though, nothing ever blew over.

  I said, “I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately. For a while, I thought Tomlinson was just leverage. A way to keep me on the job. You’d spare him; I’d keep working for you. But you’ve been pushing so hard, I’m starting to think he worries you for some reason. Something I don’t know about. Is that why you want him taken out?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “If I had a choice, it would.”

  “You do. Your buddy doesn’t.”

  “It won’t be me. I’ll never do it. Not a chance.”

  “Never say never. For now, you’re being nice, buying him time. But time’s going to run out, you know.”

  “We’ll see. Now, what did you have in mind?”

  I told Harrington to tell me about the assignments. I’d see if I could fit one in between having a baby, running my business, and trying to live a normal life.

  Abu Sayyaf, a violent Islamic fanatic, had helped plan a train bombing in Madrid-killed a couple hundred innocent souls-and was now working on a plot to target school buses in the U.S., according to intelligence assets.

  “Various agencies have people tracking the progress,” Harrington said. “But they don’t do the kind of work we do. Up close. Personal.”

  Terrorists believe they can implode the scaffolding of a society by creating chaos. Bombing schoolkids was madness, but an effective madness if chaos was the goal.

  Hal’s sources had told him that Sayyaf would soon be taking a cruise, possibly out of Lauderdale. They weren’t sure of the dates. Something about his European mistress having problems shaking her husband.

  “What I’m thinking is, maybe you can introduce yourself to the gentleman one night while you’re at sea. A quick hello. Then good-bye.”

  I knew what that meant. Could picture it. I had done a similar assignment years before. The complexities of International Maritime Law, and a dark, dark night, are both safe havens of a sort.

  “The job’s yours if you want it.”

  I had no qualms about intercepting a man capable of planting bombs on school buses. A couple of years back, I might’ve struggled with the notion. No longer. For better or worse, I’ve come to terms with who I am, and what I am. Darwinism describes the human condition as accurately as it explains the competitive process that is natural selection.

  Harrington told me, “I’ve got one more. You’ll find this interesting. Bioterrorism, maybe. Biosabotage, at the very least. We’ve got a lead on what we think is a network. There’s a small-time smuggler named Bat-tuy Nguyen who’s trying to go big-time. Vietnamese, but out of Bangkok and Cuba. He’s into the illegal reptile trade, importing dangerous exotics.”

  I was listening. Knew Harrington would save the best for last.

  “Nguyen’s been branching out. His people have been buying nasty stuff no normal collector wants. Fifty-gallon drums of contaminated water from malaria hotspots in Gabon and Cambodia. Shit holes of the world. Rats from a Ugandan laboratory. Bribing the staff. The rats have been infected with the plague. Bubonic, and there’s another type-”

  “Rats don’t carry plague; their fleas do,” I interrupted. “Bubonic and pneumonic. Rats carry the fleas. Jesus Christ, is he selling this stuff to people who have the technology to do something with it?”

  “We don’t know, it’s all fresh intel. We’re not even sure if the stuff is headed for the States. But something happened today that spiked our interest.” From the man’s confident tone-I’ve got you hooked. You’re back-I knew what it was before he said it.

  “Nguyen’s been importing contaminated water from East Africa, too. The CIA’s people thought it was the same deal. Mosquito larvae. Someone was buying. But, this afternoon, we got a report through the Centers for Disease Control saying that a certain bigshot Florida biologist had identified a weird sort of parasite near Disney World. Something called ‘guinea worms.’ Maybe they’ve spread through the water system.”

  He continued, “Nationwide, we have some other indicators, too. California, Arizona, some other places. Small-time bio-attacks aimed at screwing up local economies. But Disney? This one’s big enough to put our little team on the job.”

  Yes. He had me.

  I said, “I found the parasites in a corpse, a friend’s brother, not in the water system. You don’t want to hear about it.” I was thinking about the guinea worm samples I had in my backpack. If Jones had broken the jars when he jumped me, I might have done more than dump him over the railing. Or… maybe putting him in the water with the parasites was the worst thing I could’ve done.

  Salt water, but he wouldn’t have understood the difference.

  “Any idea who’s buying the stuff?”

  “No. We prioritize here. Have to, there’s so much going on. The bioterror operation moved up to about twentieth on the list this afternoon.”

  “Then let me give you some places to start.”

  I told him about Jobe Applebee. Told him to have his people check out the man’s business connections, any groups he was associated with. “The Albedo Society may be one,” I told him. “There may be room for fringe activism there. Tropicane Sugar’s another. Big money can rationalize just about anything. Also, do a search for the conspiracy theory types. People who hate the sugar industry. Or Disney.”

  “There are people who hate Disney?”

  Harrington was being facetious. On this nation’s paranoiac periphery, there are groups who believe Disney is at the core of global conspiracies that range from controlling the World Bank to building radio towers that communicate with sex-starved aliens.

  Studies have been done on people who believe in conspiracies. Clinical paranoia, plus nonspecific rage, are two common components. Crazy and angry: a dangerous combination.

  I said, “Someone else who might’ve been connected with Applebee is Desmond Stokes, founder of EPOC, an environmental group that contracted Applebee. Stokes is the phobic type, got rich making vitamins, but also lost his medical license, and had to move to the Bahamas. So maybe he still has a grudge.

  “I’m thinking out loud here, putting together names and subjects that seem to intersect in an u
nlikely way: Applebee, an employer, germs, disease, an exotic parasite, water.”

  “The ever-logical Dr. Ford.”

  “I try, Hal.”

  “Stokes. I’ve heard the name. I’ll have someone ship the data to you as we collect it. Doc? Let’s get something clear first ”

  I waited.

  “You’re accepting the assignments?”

  “This one. Yes.”

  “What about Abu Sayyaf, the bomber-”

  “Depends on the timing. Someone needs to take care of him. We agree about that.”

  He seemed satisfied. “Then you’re our lead tracker on this one. Work it from your end, too. When you do find Nguyen-or anyone else upper level who’s involved in this kind of tradecraft-”

  I said, “I know, I know. Etemalize. Your euphemism.”

  “Or assassinate. We can use the word. Privately. We now have four ways to officially get around Executive Order 12333. So it’s legal again. I’ll have the papers made out.”

  Harrington said that I’d be referred to as an unspecified contractor, name classified.

  “Just so you know.”

  14

  LOG

  14 Dec. Tuesday

  Wind NW 18 knots.

  Sunset 17:38.

  Manatee w/calves under dock. Wood smoke strong, curing fish at marina.

  Orders received: 30 Chordates-sea horses, file fish; live barnacle clusters; 24 horseshoe crabs; 24 brittle stars amp; anemones mix.

  Low tide-0.9 @ noon.

  Run, collect, windsurf late. Collect copepods. Mix w/Dracunculus.

  – MDF

  Early the next morning, I called Dewey. She was sleepy but civil. Sounded more like her old acerbic self.

  “You keep forgetting the time difference, bonehead,” she yawned. “When it’s this damn cold, the roosters wait until they smell coffee before they crow. And it’s gonna be another hour before I start coffee.”

  She had an appointment with her obstetrician that afternoon, she told me. So she was going to make the best of it while in town, and have some fun. “We’re going shopping.”

  I nearly asked who her shopping partner was but decided not to risk this new civility.

  For half an hour or so, I messed with my telescope, then walked to the marina, where I chatted with Mack as he loaded racks of fish into the smoker. When it was nearly 8 A.M., I clumped up the steps to Jeth’s apartment, where I awoke my sleepy-eyed son with a smothering grizzly bear hug.

  Time for our morning workout. Five days a week, we jogged Tarpon Bay Road to the beach, swam to the NO WAKE ZONE buoys a quarter mile out and back, then jogged home to the pull-up bar that I’d rigged between braces beneath the house.

  Let go of the bar, you get dropped into the water. It’s motivating.

  We did descending sets. Ladders, they’re sometimes called: fifteen pull-ups, then fourteen, then thirteen, twelve, and on down to one. A little over a hundred in all for him. I did more because I’ve been working at it hard the last six months, beating the body into shape. Watching the food intake. Alcohol, too, especially alcohol. Running, swimming, and I’d bought a cross-trainer bike. During our pull-up marathons, I started at twenty, finished the descending repetitions, then did as many as I could on the ascending ladder.

  It was brutal, but it was paying off. I much prefer administering my pain incrementally to the sad, sustained pain of a sedentary, undisciplined life.

  On our runs, the kid had had trouble keeping up during the first week or so, but that didn’t last. Now I was the one who couldn’t keep pace. Not when he stretched those legs of his, and pushed it. He was going to be an athlete.

  Sometimes we felt like talking, so we did. Other times we concentrated on the run, comfortable in silence.

  On this Tuesday morning, Lake and I ran easy eight-minute miles. I wasn’t breathing too hard as we made small talk, traded marina gossip. Turning northwest along the beach, though, I risked a more serious topic. It’d been on my mind awhile.

  “Last week, I was going through the garbage looking for a check I’d misplaced. No luck; still haven’t found it. But I did find a receipt, U.S. Mail, for something sent overnight to a DNA lab in Texas. A paternity test place. Your name was on it.”

  The boy didn’t turn to look at me. “Were you searching or snooping?”

  I said, “I’d just dumped that turtle embryo procedure I screwed up, all those bad eggs. If the missing check had been for less than five hundred dollars, I wouldn’t’ve bothered.”

  That got a slight smile. “I told you the other night I’m aware there’s a chance you might not be my biological father. Mom and her chemical mood swings-I’m not holding it against her. You and I were talking about genetics. I’m curious, that’s all.”

  “You sent in hair samples from all of us: you, me, and…?”

  “You, me, and Tomlinson. Um-huh. And Mom, too-I want to be thorough. You’re the only one who knows about it, though.”

  We ran another quarter mile in silence before I added, “Back in those days, before… before you were born, Tomlinson and I barely knew each other. We weren’t friends. And neither one of us is really sure that he… that he might have played a role. He has big blocks of amnesia from that time period.”

  Laken said, “I know. You’ve told me before. I understand.”

  “If we’d been friends, there’d of been no chance.”

  “I know that, too.”

  “I kinda wish you hadn’t gone to the trouble. Ordering the test, I mean. I don’t see the point.”

  The boy turned then, smiling. “It’s not a big deal. I’ll be back in Central America when I find out, so I’ll e-mail you the results, or call. Don’t sweat it, Dad.”

  Laken had promised to help paint the bottom of Jeth’s boat, so, after our workout, I left him at the marina and returned to my house alone.

  I showered, changed, then sat in the lab making occasional notes on the behavior of the five little bull sharks, while also researching the complex life cycle of guinea worms.

  I had more than a personal interest now. It was part of an assignment. If some group of crazies was smuggling parasites and disease vectors into the country, the operation had to be pinpointed, then disrupted. Extreme action was now one of my legal options-if the crazies existed. If I found them.

  Biovandalism or -terrorism? One was expensive, the other lethal.

  Bioterrorism dates back to the Middle Ages, when attackers used catapults to lob the corpses of black plague victims over castle walls. Disease is an effective weapon. Nature employs it daily. For bad guys, it’s much easier to conceal and transport something like mosquito larva than ground-to-air missiles.

  I wanted to learn all I could about their weapons. Understand the weaponry, understand the attackers. Where to find them, how to stop them.

  I’d already had a look at a guinea worm through my old Wolfe stereo microscope, comparing it with a photo I found on the Internet. Imagine a one-eyed monster, its head covered with bristles. From that hairy head protruded two oversized scimitar teeth.

  No mistaking what it was.

  Tomlinson stopped by an hour or so later. He came on foot from the marina, not in his new Avon dinghy. Arrived with his salt-scraggly hair braided into Willie Nelson pigtails,

  wearing Birkenstocks, yellow surfer baggies, and a muscle T-shirt that read: A BOTTLE IN FRONT OF ME IS CHEAPER THAN A FRONTAL LOBOTOMY.

  I was happier than usual to see him. I’d taken a break from my research, and was reading a distressing article in a scientific journal. The piece presented more proof that our ocean’s shark populations are being exterminated for fins and liver. For commercial fishermen-particularly Japanese fishermen-it’s a quick, space-effective process because the shark’s carcass is then dumped overboard.

  According to this study, the population of oceanic whitetip sharks, once among the world’s most common tropical species, had declined by 99 percent since the 1950s. They were now extinct in the Gulf of Mexico.
/>   Ninety-nine percent?

  Appalling.

  The study blamed overfishing, and called for tougher restrictions. Federal fisheries officials, however, responded publicly, saying that the study was flawed. Further assessment was required.

  The data I’d found on guinea worms was as unsettling. I’d printed several articles on Dracunculus medinensis. The sheath of papers lay on the table near my reading chair.

  The derivative, Dracula, nailed it. Associated it with a monster who roams around in darkness, living off the blood of others.

  Linnaeus, founder of the world system for naming plants and animals, might have found that amusing.

  The parasite was also called “the fiery serpent” because of the burning pain victims suffered. To Africa’s Haile Selassie religious devotees, it was the Serpent of Israel. Apparently, any worm that generated spontaneously inside the human body was assigned divine status.

  Nope, the parasites weren’t supposed to be found in lakes-or in human corpses-south of Disney World. Not in the Western Hemisphere, either. Except for a few remote villages in the Rajasthan Desert of India, guinea worms were found only in Africa. The most heavily infected regions lay between the Sahara and the equator.

  Subtropical and tropical climate, just like Florida.

  Nigeria, Guinea, Ghana, Uganda, Ethiopia, Chad, Senegal, and Cameroon all reported thousands of cases a year, mostly in poor rural villages seldom visited by tourists.

  I also discovered an article that confirmed that, once infested, there’s no cure. The only treatment is to allow the worms to mature inside the human body, then deal with them as they exit. The parasite could sometimes be extracted within a few days. More often, though, the process took weeks.

  During that period, the infected person suffered such agony that it was impossible to participate in normal activities. Pain continued for months. Infected African farmers couldn’t tend their crops, parents couldn’t care for children, victims couldn’t work or attend school, and were often left with permanent crippling.