Captain Franks watched the Russian ship disappear an hour later. Two more hours passed, just to be sure. At eight that morning a pair of AH-1 Huey Cobras completed their lonely overwater flight from the Marine air base at Danang, landing on Ogden’s ample flight deck. The Russians might have wondered about the presence of two attack helicopters on the ship which, their intelligence reports confidently told them, was on an electronic-intelligence mission not unlike their own. Maintenance men already aboard immediately wheeled the “snakes” to a sheltered spot and began a complete maintenance check which would verify the condition of every component. Members of Ogden’s crew lit up their own machine shop, and skilled chief machinist’s mates offered everything they had to the new arrivals. They were still not briefed on the mission, but it was clear now that something most unusual indeed was under way. The time for questioning was over. Whatever the hell it was, every resource of their ship was made available even before officers troubled themselves to relay that order to their various divisions. Cobra gunships meant action, and every man aboard knew they were a hell of a lot closer to North Vietnam than South. Speculation was running wild, but not that wild. They had a spook team aboard, then Marines, now gunships, and more helicopters would land this afternoon. The Navy medical corpsmen aboard were told to open up the ship’s hospital spaces for new arrivals.
“We’re going to raid the fuckers,” a bosun’s mate third observed to his chief.
“Don’t spread that one around,” the twenty-eight-year veteran growled back.
“Who the fuck am I gonna tell, Boats? Hey, man, I’m for it, okay?”
What is my Navy coming to? the veteran of Leyte Gulf asked himself.
“You, you, you,” the junior man called, pointing to some new seamen. “Let’s do a FOD walkdown.” That started a detailed examination of the flight deck, searching for any object that might get sucked into an engine intake. He turned back to the bosun. “With your permission, Boats.”
“Carry on.” College boys, the senior chief thought, avoiding the draft.
“And if I see anybody smoking out here, I’ll tear him a new asshole!” the salty third-class told the new kids.
But the real action was in officers’ country.
“A lot of routine stuff,” the intelligence officer told his visitors.
“We’ve been working on their phone systems lately,” Podulski explained. “It makes them use radios more.”
“Clever,” Kelly noted. “Traffic from the objective?”
“Some, and one last night was in Russian.”
“That’s the indicator we want!” the Admiral said at once. There was only one reason for a Russian to be at SENDER GREEN. “1 hope we get that son of a bitch!”
“Sir,” Albie promised with a smile, “if he’s there, he’s got.”
Demeanors had changed again. Rested now, and close to the objective, thoughts turned away from abstract dread and back into focus on the hard facts of the matter. Confidence had returned—leavened with caution and concern, but they had trained for this. They were now thinking of the things that would go right.
The latest set of photos had come aboard, taken by an RA-5 Vigilante that had screamed low over no less than three SAM sites to cover its interest in a minor and secret place. Kelly lifted the blowups.
“Still people in the towers.”
“Guarding something,” Albie agreed.
“No changes I see,” Kelly went on. “Only one car. No trucks ... nothing much in the immediate area. Gentlemen, it looks pretty normal to me.”
“Connie will hold position forty miles off seaward. The medics cross-deck today. The command team arrives tomorrow, and the next day—” Franks looked across the table.
“I go swimming,” Kelly said.
The film cassette sat, undeveloped, in a safe in the office of a section chief of the KGB’s Washington Station, in turn part of the Soviet Embassy, just a few blocks up 16th Street from the White House. Once the palatial home of George Mortimer Pullman—it had been purchased by the government of Nikolay II—it contained both the second-oldest elevator and the largest espionage operation in the city. The volume of material generated by over a hundred trained field officers meant that not all the information that came in through the door was processed locally, and Captain Yegorov was sufficiently junior that his section chief didn’t deem his information worthy of inspection. The cassette finally went into a small manila envelope which was sealed with wax, then found its way into the awkward canvas bag of a diplomatic courier who boarded a flight to Paris, flying first class courtesy of Air France. At Orly, eight hours later, the courier walked to catch an Aeroflot jet to Moscow, which developed into three and a half hours of pleasant conversation with a KGB security officer who was his official escort for this part of the journey. In addition to his official duties, the courier did quite well for himself by purchasing various consumer goods on his regular trips west. The current item of choice was pantyhose, two pairs of which went to the KGB escort.
Upon arriving in Moscow and walking past customs control, the waiting car took him into the city, where the first stop was not the Foreign Ministry, but KGB Headquarters at #2 Dzerzhinskiy Square. More than half the contents of the diplomatic pouch were handed over there, which included most of the flat pantyhose packages. Two more hours allowed the courier to find his family flat, a bottle of vodka, and some needed sleep.
The cassette landed on the desk of a KGB major. The identification chit told him which of his field force had originated it, and the desk officer filled out a form of his own, then called a subordinate to convey it to the photo lab for development. The lab, while large, was also quite busy today, and he’d have to wait a day, perhaps two, his lieutenant told him on returning. The Major nodded. Yegorov was a new though promising field officer, and was starting to develop an agent with interesting legislative connections, but it was expected that it would be a while before CASSIUS turned over anything of great importance.
Raymond Brown left the University of Pittsburgh Medical School struggling not to quiver with anger after their first visit to Dr. Bryant. It had actually gone quite well. Doris had explained many of the events of the preceding three years with a forthright if brittle voice, and throughout he’d held her hand to lend support, both physical and moral. Raymond Brown actually blamed himself for everything that had happened to his daughter. If only he’d controlled his temper that Friday night so long before—but he hadn’t. It was done. He couldn’t change things. He’d been a different person then. Now he was older and wiser, and so he controlled his rage on the walk to the car. This process was about the future, not the past. The psychiatrist had been very clear about that. He was determined to follow her guidance on everything.
Father and daughter had dinner at a quiet family restaurant—he’ d never learned to cook well—and talked about the neighborhood, which of Doris’s childhood friends were doing what, in a gentle exercise at catching up on things. Raymond kept his voice low, telling himself to smile a lot and let Doris do most of the talking. Every so often her voice would slow, and the hurt look would reappear. That was his cue to change the subject, to say something nice about her appearance, maybe relate a story from the shop. Most of all he had to be strong and steady for her. Over the ninety minutes of their first session with the doctor, he’d learned that the things he’d feared for three years had indeed come to pass, and somehow he knew that other things as yet unspoken were even worse. He would have to tap on undiscovered resources to keep his anger in, but his little girl needed him to be a—a rock, he told himself. A great big rock that she could hold on to, as solid as the hills on which his city was built. She needed other things, too. She needed to rediscover God. The doctor had agreed with him about it, and Ray Brown was going to take care of it, with the help of his pastor, he promised himself, staring into his little girl’s eyes.
It was good to be back at work. Sandy was running her floor again, her two-week absence written off by Sam
Rosen as a special-duty assignment, which his status as a department chairman guaranteed would pass without question. The post-op patients were the usual collection of major and minor cases. Sandy’s team organized and managed their care. Two of her fellow nurses asked a few questions about her absence. She answered merely by saying she’d done a special research project for Dr. Rosen, and that was enough, especially with a full and busy patient load. The other members of the nursing team saw that she was somewhat distracted. There was a distant look in her eyes from time to time, her thoughts elsewhere, dwelling on something. They didn’t know what. Perhaps a man, they all hoped, glad to have the team leader back. Sandy was better at handling the surgeons than anyone else on the service, and with Professor Rosen backing her up, it made for a comfortable routine.
“So, you replace Billy and Rick yet?” Morello asked.
“That’ll take a while, Eddie,” Henry replied. “This is going to mess up our deliveries.”
“Aw, crap! You got that too complicated anyway.”
“Back off, Eddie,” Tony Piaggi said. “Henry has a good routine set up. It’s safe and it works—”
“And it’s too complicated. Who’s gonna take care of Philadelphia now?” Morello demanded.
“We’re working on that,” Tony answered.
“All you’re doing is dropping the stuff off and collecting the money, for Crissake! They’re not going to rip anybody off, we’re dealing with business people, remember?” Not street niggers, he had the good sense not to add. That part of the message got across anyway. No offense, Henry.
Piaggi refilled the wineglasses. It was a gesture Morello found both patronizing and irritating.
“Look,” Morello said, leaning forward. “I helped set up this deal, remember? You might not even be starting with Philly yet if it wasn’t for me.”
“What are you saying, Eddie?”
“I’ll make your damn delivery while Henry gets his shit back together. How hard is it? Shit, you got broads doing it for you!” Show a little panache, Morello thought, show them I have what it takes. Hell, at least he’d show the guys in Philly, and maybe they could do for him what Tony wouldn’t do. Yeah.
“Sure you want to take the chance, Eddie?” Henry asked with an inward smile. This wop was so easy to predict.
“Fuck, yeah.”
“Okay,” Tony said with a display of being impressed. “You make the call and set it up.” Henry was right, Piaggi told himself. It had been Eddie all along, making his own move. How foolish. How easily dealt with.
“Still nothing,” Emmet Ryan said, summarizing the Invisible Man Case. “All this evidence—and nothing.”
“Only thing that makes sense, Em, is somebody was making a move.” Murders didn’t just start and stop. There had to be a reason. The reason might be hard, even impossible to discover in many cases, but an organized and careful series of murders was a different story. It came down to two possibilities. One was that someone had launched a series of killings to cover the real target. That target had to be William Grayson, who had dropped from the face of the earth, probably never to return alive, and whose body might someday be discovered—or not. Somebody very angry about something, very careful, and very skilled, and that somebody—the Invisible Man—had taken it to that point and stopped there.
How likely was that? Ryan asked himself. The answer was impossible to evaluate, but somehow the start-stop sequence seemed far too arbitrary. Far too much buildup for a single, seemingly inconsequential target. Whatever Grayson had been, he hadn’t been the boss of anyone’s organization, and if the murders had been a planned sequence, his death simply was not a logical stopping place. At least, Ryan frowned, that was what his instincts told him. He’d learned to trust those undefined inner feelings, as all cops do. And yet the killings had stopped. Three more pushers had died in the last few weeks; he and Douglas had visited every crime scene only to find that they’d been two quite ordinary robberies gone bad, with the third a turf fight that one had lost and another won. The Invisible Man was gone, or at least inactive, and that fact blew away the theory which had to him seemed the most sensible explanation for the killings, leaving only something far less satisfying.
The other possibility did make more sense, after a fashion. Someone had made a move on a drug ring as yet undiscovered by Mark Charon and his squad, eliminating pushers, doubtless encouraging them to switch allegiance to a new supplier. Under that construction, William Grayson had been somewhat more important in the great scheme of things—and perhaps there was another murder or two, as yet undiscovered, which had eliminated the command leadership of this notional ring. One more leap of imagination told Ryan that the ring taken down by the Invisible Man was the same he and Douglas had been chasing after, lo these many months. It all tied together in a very neat theoretical bundle.
But murders rarely did that. Real murder wasn’t like a TV cop show. You never figured it all out. When you knew who, you might never really learn why, at least not in a way that really satisfied, and the problem with applying elegant theories to the real-life fact of death was that people didn’t fit theories terribly well. Moreover, even if that model for the events of the past month were correct, it had to mean that a highly organized, ruthless, and deadly-efficient individual was now operating a criminal enterprise in Ryan’s city, which wasn’t exactly good news.
“Tom, I just don’t buy it.”
“Well, if he’s your commando, why did he stop?” Douglas asked.
“Do I remember right? Aren’t you the guy who came up with that idea?”
“Yeah, so?”
“So you’re not helping your lieutenant very much, Sergeant.”
“We have a nice weekend to think about it. Personally, I’m going to cut the grass and catch the double-header on Sunday, and pretend I’m just a regular citizen. Our friend is gone, Em. I don’t know where, but he might as well be on the other side of the world. Best guess, somebody from out of town who came here on a job, and he did the job, and now he’s gone.”
“Wait a minute!” That was a new theory entirely, a contract assassin right out of the movies, and those people simply did not exist. But Douglas just headed out of the office, ending the chance for a discussion that might have demonstrated that each of the detectives was half wrong and half right.
Weapons practice started under the watchful eyes of the command team, plus whatever sailors could find an excuse to come aft. The Marines told themselves that the two newly arrived admirals and the new CIA puke had to be as jet-lagged as they’d been upon arrival, not knowing that Maxwell, Greer, and Ritter had flown a VIP transport most of the way, taking the Pacific in easier hops, with drinks and comfortable seats.
Trash was tossed over the side, with the ship moving at a stately five knots. The Marines perforated the various blocks of wood and paper sacks in an exercise that was more a matter of entertainment for the crew than real training value. Kelly took his turn, controlling his CAR-15 with two- and three-round bursts, and hitting the target. When it was over the men safed their weapons and headed back to their quarters. A chief stopped Kelly as he was reentering the superstructure.
“You’re the guy going in alone?”
“You’re not supposed to know that.”
The chief machinist’s mate just chuckled. “Follow me, sir.” They headed forward, diverting from the Marine detail and finding themselves in Ogden’s impressive machine shop. It had to be impressive, as it was designed not merely to service the ship herself, but also the needs of whatever mobile equipment might be embarked. On one of the worktables, Kelly saw the sea sled he’d be using to head up the river.
“We’ve had this aboard since San Diego, sir. Our chief electrician and 1 been playing with it. We’ve stripped it down, cleaned everything, checked the batteries—they’re good ones, by the way. It’s got new seals, so it oughta keep the water out. We even tested it in the well deck. The guarantee says five hours. Deacon and I worked on it. It’s good for seve
n,” the chief said with quiet pride. “I figured that might come in handy.”
“It will, Chief. Thank you.”
“Now let’s see this gun.” Kelly handed it over after a moment’s hesitation, and the chief started taking it apart. In fifteen seconds it was field-stripped, but the chief didn’t stop there.
“Hold on!” Kelly snapped as the front-sight assembly came off.
“It’s too noisy, sir. You are going in alone, right?”
“Yes, I am.”
The machinist didn’t even look up. “You want me to quiet this baby down or do you like to advertise?”
“You can’t do that with a rifle.”
“Says who? How far you figure you have to shoot?”
“Not more than a hundred yards, probably not that much. Hell, I don’t even want to have to use it—”
“ ’Cuz it’s noisy, right?” The chief smiled. “You want to watch me, sir? You’re gonna learn something.”
The chief walked the barrel over to a drill press. The proper bit was already in place, and under the watchful eyes of Kelly and two petty officers he drilled a series of holes in the forward six inches of the hollow steel rod.
“Now, you can’t silence a supersonic bullet all the way, but what you can do is trap all the gas, and that’ll surely help.”
“Even for a high-power cartridge?”
“Gonzo, you all set up?”
“Yeah. Chief,” a second-class named Gonzales replied. The rifle barrel went onto a lathe, which cut a shallow but lengthy series of threads.
“I already got this made up.” The chief held up a can-type suppressor, fully three inches in diameter and fourteen inches long. It screwed nicely onto the end of the barrel. A gap in the can allowed reattachment of the front sights, which also locked the suppressor fully in place.