in a meth dealer turf war. He liked that the Steyr was light and small enough to be held in one hand, yet capable of delivering the same firepower as a submachine gun. Its primary disadvantage was accuracy, but even if 90 percent of his rounds went awry, he could still do the job several times over.
He turned off the road at the position Pitman had texted him, a driveway leading to a darkened, tin-roofed farmhouse, a half mile below the ridge where the slain meth cook had been found. Bull parked in such a way that a passerby might think he’d stopped to collect his mail.
He lowered his window enough to allow the nose of the Steyr out, then took up his PVS-29. The difference between this monocular and a typical night scope was its proprietary light intensifier that amplified more electrons and thus delivered an unbelievably bright and sharp image. He’d once asked one of Langley’s “Toy Makers” exactly how many more electrons. “Thirty-eight thousand bucks worth,” the man replied. From a hundred yards away, on this overcast and particularly dark night, an ordinary scope would have enabled Bull to distinguish only the gender of the occupants of the vehicle presently approaching, and maybe not even that much. The PVS-29 turned night into a hazy afternoon, meaning he would have little difficulty recognizing rabbits Drummond and Charlie Clark.
The vehicle was a late-model Toyota coupe. At the wheel was a young woman in her mid-twenties, fair- haired with a roundish face. Pretty enough, Bull thought, that it was peculiar she was out so late alone. Of course the rabbits might be hiding below the window line, one of them poking a gun into her hip. Also peculiar: she was speaking; she was too young and too normal-looking to be talking to herself.
When the Toyota was within seventy or eighty yards, he saw a glint of a cell phone bud in her ear. Her brow was knitted. Her lips pursed, then opened into the shape of an O, and finally snapped shut.
“‘Mom!’” he repeated to himself as the Toyota shrieked by.
A minute later came an SUV, an old one. Again he focused on the driver. A young man, also by himself, between twenty and thirty years old. At nine P.M. in areas such as this, where residents woke with the sun, 80 percent of vehicles were driven by lone men, and of them, 90 percent were between twenty and thirty. At a hundred yards, the driver looked like Abbott or Costello, whichever was the fat one. In other words, no resemblance to Charlie Clark, whose photo glowed on Bull’s BlackBerry. Also the fat man was singing too boisterously for someone who’d been carjacked. Bull read his lips too: “Stayin aliiiiive.” He let Abbott or Costello stay alive.
A few seconds later came an even older SUV, a late-seventies Jeep Wagoneer. In the front seat were two men. The driver was white, between twenty and thirty. Of course. He wore an old hunting cap, side flaps down. Hats of any sort ignited Bull’s suspicion, especially when worn in a heated vehicle. But the Wagoneer was old enough that the heat had probably given out years ago. Parts and labor for a new heater core would run more than the old Jeep was worth.
When the Jeep was close enough, Bull saw that the driver, unlike Charlie Clark, had a buzz cut. Maybe old Drummond had come into possession of a pair of scissors, or a hedge trimmer even, and sought to alter the shape of his son’s head. Probably he’d learned that trick on day one of Disguise. Then there was the driver’s beard, like a billy goat’s, the sort seen on the up-there mountain folk. Whenever people see a unique feature on a person, Bull knew-and Drummond Clark certainly knew too-they fixate on the feature rather than on the person. A fingerful of elementary adhesive, chewing gum even, followed by a few hair clippings, and a man had a beard that would surely have strangers asking, “Does he know a woman who finds that attractive?” or “How does he manage to keep it out of his soup?”
Bull had mere seconds to make up his mind whether to fire. He devoted the time to the passenger, slumped in an awkward recline, as if passed out. His face was pressed against the window so that it was effectively hidden. He too wore a hat, a cowboy hat, with a wide brim that hid all except for a few dark strands of his hair. Drummond might have adhered his son’s relatively dark hair clippings over his own white hair beneath the hat line. Drummond wasn’t nearly as beefy as this redneck though.
Patrons of Miss Tabby’s, Bull reckoned.
Once the Wagoneer had passed, he texted the license plate number to Pitman and Dewart, just in case.
An hour later, Dewart received confirmation that a traffic camera at the Virginia-Maryland border photographed the same license plate. He passed the pertinent information to state troopers in the vicinity, who soon found the Wagoneer in a rest stop parking lot, empty except for the well-dressed scarecrow in the passenger seat.
43
At dawn on weekdays, ten piers full of commercial fishing boats brought Brooklyn’s Sheepshead Bay to a boil. One by one they joined a bobbing traffic jam to the day’s best fishing spots. With them always was the forty-five- foot stern dragger Sea Dog. Every so often she bypassed the good fishing spots, and her captain ignited the pair of supplementary ten-cylinder diesel engines hidden in her belly. No one guessed it, what with the Sea Dog’s dented hull and ungainly array of masts and poles and tangled netting, but she could cruise at twenty knots, meaning Nova Scotia could be in sight in time for breakfast the next day.
“Ideally we can take the Sea Dog to Halifax,” Drummond said to Charlie, who was still unable to resist running his fingers through the stubble that used to be his hair. They were in a gas station minimart a few miles into Maryland, weaving around hanger racks of Baltimore Orioles souvenir T-shirts, heading to the pay phone to call the Sea Dog’s captain.
Every few seconds a big rig blew past on I-95, rattling the flimsy building. The only other customer was a middle-aged man focused on keeping a low profile himself; he was selecting condoms. The woman at the register appeared poised to nod off. As benign as the two seemed, Charlie no longer regarded anyone without suspicion.
“From Nova Scotia we can obfuscate our trail with a stop at Saint-Pierre et Miquelon, the French territory ten miles southwest of the Burin Peninsula,” Drummond said. “There we should have no difficulty finding cargo ship passage to Europe.” Their eventual destination was a clinic in Geneva. “And if at any time before we’re at sea, I start blathering about the Merrimack River or for whatever reason you’re unsure of what to do, where do we go to ground…?”
On the drive from Virginia, Drummond had drilled Charlie on contingencies which, unlike a Fairview Inn, were not on the law enforcement agencies’ Fax Blast list. As if reciting a mantra now, Charlie replied, “Fleabags, flophouses, and whorehouses.”
“Correct,” Drummond said.
“Sounds like it would make a good TV show, doesn’t it?”
Amused, seemingly in spite of himself, Drummond deposited two quarters into the coin slot and dialed a Los Angeles number. Fifty cents bought three minutes of talk time to anywhere in the United States. After one fuzzy ring, a synthesized voice said, “You have reached a number that is either not working or has been disconnected. Please hang up and try your call again.”
Undaunted, Drummond remained on the line and hit 2.
Nothing happened.
He waited two seconds, then hit 2 twice more.
“Three,” came the synthesized voice again. Then the line went dead.
“Excellent,” Drummond said. Turning to Charlie, he added, “Don’t worry, it’s not contingency plan time yet. The captain of the Sea Dog is a former operative of the old school, which is to our benefit, because Fielding and his team are better equipped to pick up the trail when silicon chips are involved. ‘Three’ is the number for the dead drop where we’ll book our trip.”
44
The Chevy Malibu, which Drummond acquired in Delaware, gobbled up the remaining miles to New York State. Finally, Brooklyn rose at the far end of the Williamsburg Bridge, the twinkling lights and two-in-the-morning vapor giving the city the appearance of a distant solar system. At the wheel, Charlie blinked repeatedly to keep
