P Deutermann - The Moonpool

“Try something for me while you’re still in place: Get Dr. Thomason’s access card, see if it has magic it’s not supposed to.”

“Who’s he?”

“That Russian’s deputy dog, in the moonpool building.”

“Will do. See you shortly.”

At ten that evening, Pardee, the shepherds, and I climbed through the tattered chain-link fence on the landward side of the container junkyard. No longer having a boat, we’d driven across into Wilmington and parked in an industrial area behind an abandoned elementary school. I’d sandwiched the Suburban between two semitrailers that looked as if they’d grown roots into the trash-littered concrete.

We’d ended up with two choices on the timing of our get-together with Trask. We could go early, find a decent tactical position out there in the junkyard, and wait for Trask, or we could go much later, making Trask do the waiting, while ceding to him a good ambush position. Pardee had suggested a third option: Don’t go at all. Ask the Bureau to scour the junkyard at the appointed time and see what they came up with.

The problem was that my Bureau had never called back. Creeps either didn’t get the message, or did and failed to care. Or he’d been told to stay out of it by his adult supervision. Unknowns abounded. I’d been about to chide Pardee for his lack of interest in a good fight, but then remembered the tension we’d experienced the last time he and Tony backed out.

We’d also talked about calling the port security people, but, as Pardee pointed out, we had no standing with them, and their domain probably did not extend to the junkyard. If we ran into the undercover ICE agent, he’d know who we were, but otherwise we were as unauthorized as Trask. My objective was to lay eyes and possibly a tire iron on Carl Trask, and find out if his little comment about Allie Gardner was real or just an enticement. We had new cell phones with all the appropriate numbers programmed into speed dial, guns, dogs, and a personal invitation. All we had to do now was find him, and hopefully not from the focal point of his kill zone.

We had a map, of sorts. Pardee had gone online to one of those satellite photography Web sites and bought a direct overhead picture of the entire container port area, zoomed close enough to make out individual features of the container junkyard. He’d printed out two copies, and we’d traced a route that should take us through the campfire area. From there we’d do an expanding square search. The plan was for the shepherds and me to go in and for Pardee to follow about five minutes behind in case I stepped in something.

If we didn’t encounter Trask, we’d join forces at the gap in the fence, look for a place to hole up out there, and then I’d see if I could flush him out. It wasn’t a very complicated plan, but then it wasn’t a very complicated mission. In my experience you could plan all day, but, as the military guys say, no plan survives first contact with the enemy, so you might as well keep it simple.

We set our cell phones on vibrate, and I went through the fence and down a steep embankment into the jumble of wrecked containers. The night was clear and not all that cold for a change. There was plenty of light looming into the sky from the main container yard, but the junkyard was not lighted at all. I had to pick my way carefully through the shadowy pile while not showing any light of my own. After a few clumsy minutes of this, I found a piece of steel pipe I could use as a walking stick, which made things easier. I was wearing SWAT cammies and a tactical belt with holster, one spare clip, a small first aid pouch, and a military survival knife.

Our overhead photography showed that the area where we’d run into the derelicts was about two hundred yards in from the warehouse side of the junkyard. Beyond that was the creek inlet where we’d anchored when we still had a boat. I’d explained the mission to the shepherds, who’d been vitally interested for a good five seconds. Still, now they seemed to understand that we were walking into Injun country. Frick walked ahead of me, picking her footing carefully and stopping to sniff the ground frequently. I could only imagine how strong the scent quilt must be to that supersensitive nose. Frack walked behind me, stepping where I did, as if he suspected there were land mines in here.

I slowed it down, placing each step tentatively on the litter underfoot before putting my weight on it. Trask knew we couldn’t come by water this time, so our way in would have to be through the container yard itself or the warehouse blocks on the landward side. That three-container tunnel was just too good a place for an ambush, which was why we’d come in from the Wilmington side. I leaned against the rusting sides of a fractured container and tried to think of what I would do if I were Trask. Would he simply want to finish the job, or did he really want to talk a little? Was he expecting just me or all three of us? Or was he out on his boat somewhere, having a Scotch and laughing at the thought of us poking around in the junkyard? If he was in here somewhere, had he ever wired his private concrete jungle for sound and night vision lights? The farther in I went, the better Pardee’s option three sounded.

I had stopped in a sort of canyon of discarded shipping containers. I’d been keeping to the left side of the passage through all the containers because it seemed darker on that side, as well as less cluttered with debris. There was a strong smell of diesel oil in the air now, but I couldn’t tell if I was standing in a puddle of it or it was just the rusting steel barrels oozing into the night air. It was nearly complete darkness where I was standing, but I could see a dim light flickering around the edges of the ten-foot-high steel boxes ahead.

Flickering?

Had I reached the hobo campfire already? It seemed too soon, but it was easy to become disoriented here in the darkness amid the jumble of industrial trash, wrecked containers, and other debris. The dogs had their ears up and appeared to be listening to something ahead of us. I tried to listen, too, but heard nothing but the low hum of the city behind me and the whine of semi tires out on Shipyard Boulevard. If that was the campfire area, the way to it was straight ahead on what was obviously a well-used path.

Too well used. It felt wrong.

So I retraced my steps until I came to the edge of a container, which I could feel more than see, and turned right to work my way around to a different approach. I’d be off the route Pardee and I had agreed upon, but I should have time to get to the margins of the campfire area before he came along behind me. Ten quietly crunching steps into almost total darkness and I bumped into the steel walls of another container that was blocking the way.

I was in a box canyon, literally. There were steel walls rising ten feet over my head in three directions.

There was a crack between the corners of the two boxes, through which I could now definitely make out the glow of a small fire reflecting off a two-high stack of ruined containers. I could see a few hunched shapes of the homeless guys silhouetted against the fire. I looked over my shoulder and saw that the shepherds were waiting for me back where I’d made the wrong turn. Lot of help there, I thought.

Then they both looked over their shoulders and disappeared.

I blinked and looked again. No dogs.

Keeping my back to one of the containers, I slid my way back to the entrance of my little detour, all by feel. I still had the steel pipe, but I laid this down in order to extract my. 45 and a high-intensity penlight from my coat pocket.

When I got back to the entrance to my dead end, there were still no shepherds. What in the hell had they gone after? Hopefully not a rat. The wolf genes in any German shepherd might not be able to resist a fleeing rat. Discipline would eventually intrude, but the reflexive reaction would be a snapping lunge. I should have put them on a down, but that would have involved speaking the command in the darkness.