Tom Clancy - Without Remorse

'That'd be fine.'

Kelly called a Yellow Cab, which picked him up at the marina entrance. Hie first stop of the day was a rather disreputable business establishment called Kolonel Klunker, where he rented a 1959 Volkswagen, prepaying it for a month, with no mileage charge.

'Tnank you, Mr Aiello,' the man said to a smiling Kelly, who was using the ID from a man who no longer needed it. He drove the car back to the marina and started unloading the things he needed. Nobody paid much attention, and in fifteen minutes the Beetle was gone.

Kelly took the opportunity to drive through the area he'd be hunting, checking traffic patterns. It was agreeably vacant, a part of the city he'd never visited before, off a bleak industrial thoroughfare called O'Donnell Street, a place where nobody lived and few would want to. The air was laden with the smells of various chemicals, few of them pleasant. Not as busy as it once had been, many of the buildings in the district looked unused. More to the point, there was much open ground here, many buildings separated from one another by flat areas of bare dirt which trucks used for a convenient place to reverse direction. No kids playing sandlot ball, not a single house in sight, and because of that, not a single police car to be seen. Rather a clever ploy on the part of his enemies, Kelly thought, at least from one perspective. The place he was interested in was a single freestanding building with a half-destroyed sign over the entrance. The back of it was just a blank wall. There were only three doors, and though they were on two different walls, all could be observed from a single point, and to Kelly's rear was another vacant building, a tall concrete structure with plenty of broken windows. His initial reconnaissance complete, Kelly headed north.

Oreza was heading south. He'd already been partway there, conducting a routine patrol and wondering why the hell the Coast Guard didn't start up a ministration farther down on the Eastern Shore, or maybe by Cove Point Light, where there was an existing station for the guys who spent their waking hours, if any, making sure the light bulb at the top of the tower worked. That wasn't especially demanding duty to Oreza's mind, though it was probably all right for the kid who ran the place. His wife had just delivered twins, after all, and the Coast Guard was a family-oriented branch of the military.

He was letting one of his junior seamen do the driving, enjoying the morning, standing outside the cramped wheelhouse, drinking some of his home-brewed coffee.

'Radio,'one of the crewmen said.

Oreza went inside and took the microphone. 'Four-One Alfa here.'

'Four- One Alfa, this is English at Thomas Base. Your pickup is at a dock at Dame's Choice. You'll see cop car there. Got an ETA?'

'Call it twenty or twenty-five, Mr E.'

'Roger that. Out.'

'Come left,' Oreza said, looking at his chart. The water looked plenty deep. 'One-six-five.'

'One- six-five, aye.'

Xantha was more or less sober, though weak. Her dark skin had a gray pallor to it, and she complained of a splitting headache that analgesics had scarcely touched. She was aware that she was under arrest now, and that her rap sheet had arrived on teletype. She was also canny enough to have requested the presence of a lawyer. Strangely, this had not bothered the police very much.

'My client,' the attorney said, 'is willing to cooperate.' The agreement had taken all of ten minutes to strike. If she was telling the truth, and if she was not involved in a major felony, the possession charge against her would be dropped, subject to her enrollment in a treatment program. It was as good a deal as anyone had offered Xantha Matthews in some years. It was immediately appearent why this was true.

'They was gonna kill me!' she said, remembering it all now that she was outside the influence of the barbiturates, and now that her attorney gave her permission to speak.

'Who's "they"?' Captain Joy asked.

'They dead. He killed '?m, the white boy, shot 'em dead. An' he left the drugs, whole shitload of 'em.'

'Tell us about the white man,' Joy asked, with a look to Freeland that ought to have been disbelieving but was not.

'Big dude, like him' - she pointed to Freeland - 'but he face all green like a leaf. He blindfold me af'er he took me down, then he put me on that pier an' tol' me to catch a bus or somethin'.'

'How do you know he was white?'

'Wrists was white. Hands was green, but not up here, like,' she said, indicating on her own arms. 'He wear green clothes with stripes on 'em, like a soldier, carry a big.45.I was asleep when he shoot, that wake me up, see? Make me get dress, take me away, drop me off, he boat just go away.'

'What kind of boat?'

'Big white one, tall, like, big, like thirty feet lon'.'

'Xantha, how do you know they were going to kill you?'

'White boy say so, he show me the things in the boat, the little one.'

'What do you mean?'

'Fishnet shit, like, and cement blocks. He say they tell him they do it before.'

The lawyer decided it was his turn to speak. 'Gentlemen, my client has information about what may be a major criminal operation. She may require protection, and in return for her assistance, we would like to have state funding for her treatment.'

'Counselor,' Joy replied quietly, 'if this is what it sounds like, I'll fund it out of my own budget. May I suggest, sir, that we keep her in our lockup for the time being? For her own safety, the need for which seems quite apparent, sir.' The State Police captain had been negotiating with lawyers for years, and had started sounding like one, Freeland thought.

'The food here is fo' shit!' Xantha said, her eyes closed in pain.

'We'll take care of that, too,' Joy promised her.

'I think she needs some medical help,' the lawyer noted. 'How can she get it here?'

'Doctor Paige will be here right after lunch to see her. Counselor, your client is in no condition to look after herself now. All charges against her are dropped pending verification of her story. You'll get everything you want, in return for her cooperation. I can't do any more than that.'

'My client agrees to your conditions and suggestions,' the lawyer said without consulting her. The county would even pay his fee. Besides, he felt as though he might be doing the world a good deed. It was quite a change from getting drunk drivers off.

'There's a shower that way. Why not get her cleaned up? You may also wish to get her some decent things to wear. Give us the bill.'

'A pleasure doing business with you. Captain Joy,' he said as the barracks commander left for Freeland's car.

'Ben, you really fell into something. You handled her real nice. I won't forget. Now show me how fast this beast goes.'

'You got it, Cap'n.' Freeland engaged the lights before passing seventy. They made it to the dock just as the Coast Guard turned out of the main channel.

The man wore lieutenant's bars - though he called himself a captain - and Oreza saluted him as he came aboard. Both police officers were given life jackets to wear because Coast Guard regulations required them on small boats, and then Joy showed him the chart.

'Think you can get in there?'

'No, but our launch can. What gives?'

'A possible triple homicide, possible drug involvement. We overflew the area this morning. There's a fishing boat right here.'

Oreza nodded as impassively as possible and took the wheel himself, pushing the throttles to the stops. It was a bare five miles to the graveyard - that was how Oreza thought of it - and he plotted his approach as carefully as possible.

'No closer? The tide's in,' Freeland said.

'That's the problem. Place like this, you go it at low water so's in case you beach you can float off. From here on we use the launch.' Wheels were turning in his mind while his crewmen got the fourteen-foot launch deployed. Months earlier, that stormy night with lieutenant Charon from Baltimore, a possible drug deal that he'd expected to take place somewhere on the Bay. Some real serious guys, he'd told Portagee. Oreza already wondered if there might be a connection.