Kirk Russell - Shell Games

Marquez called Katherine back and turned on the porch lights. He laid a gun next to his laptop and then clicked on the computer, which seemed to boot up too slowly. As he’d feared, the Web site was up again but had changed. A scene that maybe only he would recognize showed on the screen. It took him a moment to be sure what he was seeing, a yellowed photograph of a human skull on a stone altar ringed by candles, and at the center the DEA badges. There were wedding bands and photo IDs, driver’s licenses, and the other proof Kline had laid out and photographed eleven years ago. It still reached across the years and shocked him.

He clicked out and checked for e-mail, found nothing, backed out, and his cell phone rang.

“There are three agents on their way to you,” Douglas said. “Four agents are in Bernal Heights with your ex. Anything more from Davies?”

“No.”

“Keep trying to call him.”

A few minutes later headlights showed up on Ridge Road, dis-appeared in the dip in the driveway, then reflected through his windows. He saw two men in a white Suburban in the driveway. He opened the door and told them they were welcome to stay if they hoped Davies would show, but that he was taking off, which didn’t make any sense to them. They tried to get him to wait while they called Douglas.

“Douglas has my cell number,” Marquez said. “Tell him to call me.”

When he got in the Explorer he threw his coat on the passen-ger seat and glanced behind him, making sure he’d transferred everything from the Nissan. A little more than a half moon was well into the western sky when he dropped off the mountain. He couldn’t look at it without wondering what the clue about the moon and the boat was supposed to mean. He spoke the names of boats he knew as if hearing Blue Moon, Full Moon, or Moondance would bring the connection.

Marquez was near the base of the mountain, ready to turn past the bar on the corner when he heard a rustling behind him. He knew immediately someone was under the tarp covering the equipment, someone who must have gotten in when he’d left the truck unlocked earlier, when he’d been transferring what he’d planned to take. Marquez started pulling and Davies’s voice was hard.

“Bring your hand back to the wheel or I’ll shoot you. Drive to where you dock your boat.”

“What’s there?”

Davies climbed from the rear compartment and Marquez glanced at the rearview mirror. Good chance the FBI would pick him up or already had. Douglas would call, no question about that, and now he felt a cold gun muzzle press against his neck.

“Stakes are high, Lieutenant.” They crossed lower Marin on the freeway and then drove through San Rafael and came up alongside a cop at a stoplight. Davies slouched back behind the passenger seat, his profile hidden by the tinted windows. “If you do the wrong thing, you’ll get the cop killed,” he said. “Take your hands off the wheel and you’ll make your wife a widow.”

“My hands are on the wheel, but I thought we were on the same side.” They drove to Loch Lomond Marina, turned in, and were alone. “I need to turn around and line up the boat hitch. I’ve got to get out.”

Marquez had a way he angled the Explorer, a way he liked to line up on the fence and another boat that had never been moved in the time he’d rented here. He purposefully missed this time, knew the trailer ball and boat hitch wouldn’t be near enough to hook the boat trailer up.

“It’s a life or death situation, Lieutenant, and I’ve got to bring you to him and we need your boat for that.”

“I’m always missing with the hitch,” Marquez said.

Davies’s voice was low and very quiet. His face had been darkened with camouflage paint and he pointed the gun at Mar-quez’s chest.

“There isn’t enough time for this shit. Hook it up.”

Marquez backed up, got out and attached the trailer hitch, then backed the boat trailer down until the Fountain floated. He did it all slowly and knew the FBI had his position from the tele-locator. He got on board with Davies now, though the Explorer still idled, its muffler coughing as it caught water.

“Back up slowly,” Davies said, and got on the boat behind him. “Keep the speed at twenty-five as we clear the channel. You can figure his people are watching.”

Marquez went with it, hoping Davies was taking him straight to the boat. He looked at the Explorer sitting on the ramp with the driver’s door open, headlights on and the engine running, and backed the boat around. They came under the San Rafael Bridge and out into the open bay, veering right of Angel Island through Raccoon Strait, and above the engines he asked, “Out the Gate?”

“No, and cut your speed. Go under the Bay Bridge.”

They crossed past the San Francisco waterfront, under the Bay Bridge, and down past China Basin. They headed toward boats docked offshore in a row in the channel. He saw an old transport vessel, maybe a hundred and twenty feet in length flying a Turkish flag, and saw the crescent moon on the flag.

“You try anything and he’ll kill her,” Davies said. “If the Feds came in with you, he’d kill her first. You understand, Lieutenant. It had to be like this. You want to call them this is the last chance. Go ahead if you want, but if they take us down before you get aboard, you won’t get her back. He gave me until dawn to bring you and I said I’d do it. He wants you and you want her back, but you’ll be on your own in there.”

Marquez climbed up the ladder with Davies aiming at him from where the Fountain idled below, a second man above him, a small light guiding him. He could drop off the rungs and into the water without hitting the Fountain. More than likely he could avoid getting shot, swim away, and come back with the Feds. The boat wouldn’t be leaving, but what about Petersen, what if they killed her in the time it took? And the Feds would be coming any-way. He looked down again. Davies was on the ladder now, the low throb of the Fountain engine gone silent.

As Marquez reached the top of the ladder, hands as big as his own grabbed him, dragged him over the last rungs, pushed him chest-down on the deck, and a man squatted near his head with a gun. He heard Davies’s shoes clatter up the metal rungs, giving directions to the men and being ignored. They jerked Marquez to his feet, covered his head with a burlap sack, and he heard the hollow echo of their boots as he was led down a passageway and made to climb down a ladder before his wrists were bound behind him with duct tape.

“I’m with you, Lieutenant,” and Davies from behind him slid something metal into his hands. “Switchblade,” Davies whispered. “Grip it and cover it.”

A walk-in freezer door in the galley swung open and a heavy boot caught him from behind, low on his back. A rifle butt chopped at his shoulder and he stumbled forward into the compartment, bounced off the back wall and fell sideways. They ran duct tape around his ankles and left him, the door shutting, a chain rattling, a lock clicking loudly.

He uncurled his fingers from around the knife, turned it slowly in his hand, opened it and sawed through the thick layers of tape on his wrists. He pulled the hood off and reached down under his ankles and made a clean cut that didn’t show from above. He tried the door, pushed gently against the chain on the other side and could only open it an inch. He slit the plastic wrap on a package of frozen meat, pulled the telelocator from his shoe and shoved it into the package. Then he sat down against the back wall and waited, marking the time, hours passing as his fingers worked the burlap hood, knowing he’d have to put it back on, knowing he’d have to wait until the last moment, past all fear, past pain if he was stabbed first. He’d have to keep his head when the hood came off. He’d have to face everything, gamble and wait. His breath was shallow and every noise he heard was Kline coming down the corridor. He’d have to lie still, then struggle, let him start before bringing the blade up. He thought, if Kline leaves the hood on, I’ve lost.