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  “I did fix the outboard, though,” Casey offered.

  “Well, thanks for that, I guess. What happened? You have a long night at the Sunset?” Mike asked, thinking a bad hangover would be as good an excuse as any Casey could give for flaking out on him. He took another sip of beer and waited for an answer.

  “Not exactly,” Casey said. He lifted up his shirt to show Mike the gauze wrapped around the upper half of his torso. He assumed the mummy get-up was designed to keep his rib cage tight and minimize his ability to twist, thus making the injury worse, but he wasn’t really sure. Casey also noticed it was already starting to reek of moist dead skin in need of exfoliation, so he quickly put his shirt back down. He made a mental note to call the nurse later and find out how long he had to keep the bandages on.

  “Dude, what happened?” Mike asked. Casey was already growing tired of having to answer that question. It took him almost an hour talking to his mom to get her to calm down once he informed her about the wreck. In the end she was glad her son was still alive and in one piece. She didn’t even ask whether he had been wearing clean underwear—the popularly held belief being that every mother’s primary concern when of one of her children is taken to the emergency room is the possible discovery of unsightly skid marks. Now he explained the whole incident to Mike.

  When Casey was done relating the events of Thursday morning to his friend, Mike said, “I love that song. I haven’t heard it in forever.” Mike seemed a little less concerned about the accident than Casey’s mother had been. “I keep meaning to get the first season of Miami Vice on DVD.”

  Casey laughed and got a beer after putting on a pair of shorts. He walked out to the front porch and took a seat in one of the lawn chairs. Mike had already moved outside and was sitting on a portion of the porch railing that was not quite rotting...yet.

  “What time is it, anyway?” Casey asked.

  “Three forty-seven in the p.m.,” Mike informed him after checking his Casio.

  “Holy shit,” Casey said. “I didn’t know I slept that long. Hell, it’s not like I was up all night. I went to bed at twenty-three thirty after the Braves game was over.” Despite the fact that Casey was no longer in the Navy, he still thought in 24-hour military time. Sometimes it slipped out, but his friends were used to it.

  “Who won?” Mike asked.

  “Who do you think?”

  “Shit. The Braves are suckin’ this year,” Mike lamented.

  “I wouldn’t say they’re sucking, but they damn sure better get it together quick if they’re gonna even grab a wild card spot.”

  “So, when did they let you out of the hospital?” Mike asked.

  “Yesterday morning,” Casey said.

  “You just go to sleep all day? I would’ve, being sore an’ all.”

  “No, I was wired after sleeping so much at the hospital. I talked to that girl, Susan, from New York and then did some research for a new post,” Casey said. “When I was finished with that, the Braves were on TBS, so I just parked my ass on the couch and relaxed. Guess I relaxed so much I forgot all about picking you up.”

  “Don’t worry about it, man. I told you, we worked it out. I’m here ain’t I?”

  “Well, I’m still sorry,” Casey said.

  Mike held up his empty beer and said, “Let me get another one of these, and we’ll call it even.”

  “Sure, help yourself,” Casey said. When Mike returned, he took a seat in the other lawn chair. Casey asked, “So what about that biology teacher? How’d that work out for you?”

  “Hairy armpits.”

  Casey almost choked on his beer as he laughed. “What? What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “She had hairy armpits,” Mike said. “I couldn’t get past that.”

  “So she didn’t shave when she was out on the island. So what? It’s kinda like camping out there, anyway,” Casey said.

  “No. I mean she just doesn’t shave her armpits. Like European chicks, I guess,” Mike said. “She had more fur under them arms than Sasquatch, dude. Nasty.”

  Both men laughed at the image and drank their beer, enjoying the hot summer day in the cool shade of Casey’s front porch. A steady breeze kept the mosquitoes and sand gnats at bay. For Savannah in August, it was as close to pleasant as one could ask for. Mike opened the flip-top of his Camel Lights pack and fished out a half smoked joint, taking advantage of the breeze to disperse the tell-tale sweet smell of burning marijuana. Casey took another sip of beer and watched his friend light up, thankful that Mike at least had the common courtesy to indulge his illegal addiction outdoors.

  “Uh oh,” Mike said, taking a quick drag and then dropping the joint in his beer. He was glad Casey kept cans in his fridge and not bottles. They helped conceal the contents better in cases like this.

  “What?” Casey asked.

  “Five-oh.”

  Casey looked in the direction of Mike’s gaze and saw the cause of his friend’s concern. A Georgia State Patrol vehicle rolled to a stop in front of Casey’s house. A towering trooper stepped out and made his way through the sparse grass of Casey’s yard toward the front porch. “It’s just Anton, man,” Casey said. “Hey, Anton. What’s up?” he asked the trooper when he reached the porch steps.

  “Hi, Casey,” Anton said. “Mike,” he acknowledged with a nod. Without taking his eyes off of Mike, he held out his hand.

  Mike cursed under his breath and reached in his pocket for his cigarette pack. He slapped it in Anton’s hand. “Man, when are you ever gonna cut me some slack?”

  “As soon as you stop smokin’ weed,” Anton said.

  “Can I at least keep the lighter and two Camels in the pack?”

  “Sorry. Evidence.”

  “For what? Are you gonna book me?” Mike asked, although he knew the answer was negative.

  Anton ignored Mike’s plea and pocketed the box. He took off his hat and said to Casey, “Reason I came over was to tell you about your truck.”

  “Piece of shit,” Casey said. He still believed the brakes shouldn’t have failed, given that he had kept up with all the scheduled maintenance. But he also knew the Vandura was on its last leg even before the accident. He figured its time was up.

  “That may be true,” Anton said, “but that piece of shit didn’t wreck itself. It had help.”

  Casey thought his friend was criticizing his ability, or inability, to handle the old box truck. “Hey, I avoided a station wagon and a semi before the truck rolled. It’s not my driving that caused the brakes to give out.”

  “I’m not saying that. You did a hell of a job preventing any more damage and injuries to anyone else besides yourself,” Anton said. “I’m saying somebody fucked with your brake line.”

  “What? Like sabotage?” Mike asked from the sidelines of the conversation.

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying. You all right?” Anton asked Mike, distracted by Mike’s sudden coughing and the fact that his complexion had quickly turned from the deep tan of island living to an olive drab commonly found in old Army fatigues.

  “I’m good,” Mike answered hoarsely as he set down his beer, now devoid of the snuffed-out joint he forgot was floating inside.

  Anton looked back at Casey and continued. “Sheriff’s guys said there was a hole in the brake line. Not cut, but nicked out with a rock. On first look, it appeared that maybe you kicked up a rock when you were driving, but there was evidence that the line was struck repeatedly in the same spot. Whoever did it wanted it to look innocent enough, but when they couldn’t make a hole on the first try, they hit it again. Even though the line wasn’t in that great a condition, it was solid enough that it apparently took at least three hits to get a hole big enough for the brake fluid to push out.”

  “Damn,” was all Casey could muster. His mind raced in a hundred different directions as he worked on absorbing the information Anton had just given him. Having the brakes shit the bed on him was one thing, but somebody had actually tried to kill him. Or at least inj
ure him. Either way, he didn’t have a good feeling about this new revelation.

  “Look, Casey, I’m just here as your friend. Somebody from the Chatham Sheriff’s Office will be running the investigation and will be getting in touch with you in the next few days—probably Monday or Tuesday. But I wanted to make sure the weekend didn’t turn a warm lead cold, waiting for the work week to start.”

  Casey appreciated his friend’s concern. He was grateful to have a lawman on his side with a personal involvement beyond a case number assignment.

  “Who do you think would want to hurt you? I mean, who do you know that might go so far as sabotaging your brakes so you’d get in a wreck?” Anton asked.

  Casey had been trying to come up with that answer even before Anton asked the question. Mike answered for him. “Nobody,” he said. “Casey’s a stand-up dude. Everyone likes this guy.”

  “Thanks, Mike,” Casey said, “but Anton’s right. It’s not like somebody tee-peed my yard or threw eggs at my house. Whoever I pissed off wanted to hurt me bad, and they went through a lot of trouble to make it look like an accident, apparently.” Casey thought for a minute. He tried to think of anyone who had even the slightest issue with him. The Home Depot cleaning lady crossed his mind, and he smiled slightly, but quickly dismissed that possibility. “I honestly don’t know, Anton. I’m pretty low key, so I don’t see how I could....” He stopped mid-sentence. His eyes widened as if he’d just stepped on a sand spur with his bare feet.

  Anton noticed Casey’s change of countenance. “What?” he asked. “Did you think of someone?”

  “Not someone—some thing,” Casey said. “I posted a theory on my blog site a week ago, and a few days later I received a threat telling me to back off the story.”

  “Who from?” Anton asked.

  “I don’t know,” Casey said. “It was sent anonymously from Saint Petersburg.”

  “So whoever it was that fucked up your truck was from Florida?” Mike asked.

  “No. Russia,” Casey said.

  “Russia?” Anton asked, surprised. “You sure?”

  “Yeah. The posting was made from Saint Petersburg, Russia.” Casey considered telling Anton about his conversations with Susan Williams but decided to wait until he thought it might actually have some bearing on the matter. He was the one who got the threats, after all. He was the one with the bruised ribs.

  “That’s all you know?” Anton asked Casey.

  “Well, that’s all I can think of.”

  Anton ran his hand across his scalp and stared through the porch planking. “I don’t know, man,” he said. He raised his head and looked at Casey. “That’s still pretty thin. I mean, say this thing from Russia really is linked to your wreck. How is somebody from halfway across the world gonna set up a scheme like putting a hole in your brake line in just a couple of days? And if they did get someone over here that fast, how the hell did they know where you work? They had to have done the job back at the warehouse the other night, before you took it out on Thursday. You damn sure wouldn’t have been able to drive it on Wednesday without the brake fluid leaking out. It probably only took a couple minutes to drain dry as it is. Plus, they would have wanted to do the work at night, when nobody was around.”

  “Hey,” Mike interrupted, “they got cameras at the storage place, right? Like for security? Just check the tapes and see if you can see the guy who did it.”

  “No tapes. Already checked,” Anton said.

  “Yeah, the cameras haven’t worked for years,” Casey said. “Master Sergeant Willis is too cheap to fix ‘em.”

  Mike looked dejected. He was sure he had just come up with the idea that would break the case wide open.

  Anton still wasn’t convinced that the threat on Casey’s computer was directly related to his accident, but he knew it was the only thing they had to go on for the moment. “What the hell did you write, anyway, that someone would want to threaten you? Or hurt you?” he asked.

  Casey stood up from his chair. “You got a few minutes?”

  Anton watched as Casey turned towards the front door. “Sure, I’m off duty right now. Was on my way home. Why?”

  “It’ll probably be easier to understand the whole thing if you read the blog, instead of me just telling you,” Casey said.

  It took six rings before the call went through.

  “Yes?”

  “It’s me,” the man said after his contact answered the satellite phone call.

  “Is the target there?” the voice asked after a two-second delay for the transmission to be encrypted, transmitted, and decrypted electronically. The precaution was not foolproof, but it did complicate things for any unwanted listeners. After 9/11, one could never be sure that some U.S. government entity wasn’t eavesdropping on every conversation.

  “I have him visually, but there is a problem,” the caller said.

  “A problem?”

  “He is talking to the police.”

  “Where are you?” the voice asked.

  “Parked about fifty meters down the road.” The man in the beige Oldsmobile Cutlass put his binoculars on the passenger seat as the two men and the police officer entered the house and closed the door behind them. “They have gone inside,” he reported.

  “No matter,” said the voice. “The policeman is probably just following up on the accident. Routine. Besides, after tonight the target will not be able to say anything that will connect us to the ship. The other loose ends will be tied up, as well.”

  This asshole’s too confident, the man thought. He had done many clean-up jobs, and there was always uncertainty. That was the difference between those who gave the orders and those who executed them. The operative and the executive in his line of work all too often lived in different realms of reality. He was an operative, and, unlike the contact on the other end of the phone, he lived in the real world where things didn’t always fit neatly into a manila folder to be filed with the closed cases and never thought of again. Information traveled too fast in the Twenty-first Century to keep a lid on every clandestine operation. Particularly one as big as this. There were too many people involved.

  “Inform me when the job is complete,” the contact said.

  “I will,” the man answered. The phone connection was broken, and the man started the car and pulled away. He glanced at the police cruiser as he drove past and continued toward the river.

  Chapter 18

  Tehran, Iran

  Colonel Ahmad Rafi Alam sat at his desk and leafed through the weekly unit financial report. The air-conditioning unit was broken again, and the ceiling fan swirled the smoke from Alam’s cigar but was unable to push the carcinogenic cloud out of either open window and into the still air outside. A loud knock on the office door was followed by the quick entrance of Colonel Alam’s secretary.

  “Colonel, I am sorry, but General Qasim Ja’afari is on his way to see you. I did not know he was coming,” the man said. The blouse of his uniform, like that of Alam, was visibly soaked with sweat, but unlike the Colonel, the secretary was also blinking rapidly, as nervous perspiration ran from his forehead into his eyes.

  Colonel Alam placed the report on the corner of his desk and calmly asked, “When will he be here?”

  The secretary tried to dry his eyes and face with his sleeve before he answered. “He is already here, sir. He is on his way up.”

  Colonel Alam was surprised that the senior Revolutionary Guard Corps commander was coming to his office unannounced. The two men often worked closely together, both unofficially and in a more formal capacity, but it was not like the General to make the trip to Alam’s ramshackle office building. On the contrary, it was always the junior officer who came to see the general when they needed to talk. Alam was not nervous, however. He knew what Brigadier General Ja’afari wanted to discuss, and he also knew it could not be discussed over the phone. Even in Iran, or perhaps especially in Iran, Big Brother was always listening. “Thank you, Arash. You may go, but leave the door
open.”

  Alam stood up and began fanning the cigar smoke toward the window with a folder as the secretary left. He was helped by the open office door. The room was quickly cleared of the haze, but the smell of cigar was still heavy in the air when Ja’afari entered, and he closed the door behind him.

  “Salam, Ahmad,” Ja’afari said as he grasped the hand of his most loyal subordinate. Though Colonel Alam was several tiers away from the general in the chain-of-command, they had both worked together closely when Ja’afari was charged with establishing an official, sanctioned brigade of suicide bombers to be supervised and directed by the IRGC. The Gharargahe Asheghane Shahadat, or “The Lovers of Martyrdom Garrison,” was an exercise in political rhetoric as far as most of the world, and indeed most of the clerical establishment in Iran, was concerned. But both Ja’afari and Alam took their job of recruiting thousands of volunteers willing to become lethal weapons in the name of Allah, and more importantly, Iran, very seriously. They knew that perhaps only a handful of the would-be bombers would actually live up to, or more accurately, die for their commitments made when they signed up for the garrison, but that was enough. Iranians were not blind to the effectiveness of the suicide bomber, but they generally did not subscribe to the religious zealotry that drove the martyrs of Palestine or even Iraq—though the latter’s commitment to religion over power was questionable.

  “Salam, General. Please sit down,” Alam said, motioning to one of the chairs that flanked a sparse wooden coffee table in the middle of the room. “You are here about the missiles.” A statement, not a question.

  “Yes, Ahamad, I am.” The general crossed his legs as Alam took a seat in the chair across the table. “I am disappointed in the current situation,” he said. “We need those missiles if we are to quickly develop our own. The Russians are only days from reaching the ship, and I am afraid it will not be good for the country when they find the cargo. It will certainly not look good for us before the nuclear talks in Ankara. I am afraid our venture has backfired, and we will both be spending some time beneath Evin.” Ja’afari worried that their failed efforts would land them in the notorious Evin Prison in Tehran, infamous for the holding and torturing of political prisoners and traitors—at least the ones who were not hanged outright.