Off the Grid (A Gerrit O'Rourke Novel) (2 page)

“Yes sir.” Peaches held the dog as far away as possible. “Man, this here dog stinks to high heaven. What kinda dawg is he?”

“Looks like a cross between a mud-colored lab and a who-knows-what breed. He’s a mutt.”

Peaches seemed to be reading his mind. “Please, Lieutenant. Don’t make me do it.”

Smiling, Gerrit shook his head. “Just keep an eye on him. I’ll clean this freeloader up when I get back.”

Peaches opened up an empty locker—left behind by another Marine who just shipped out—and gingerly lowered the animal inside. “Okay, dog. You can pee all you want until the lieutenant gets back—just don’t poop.”

Peaches always made him smile. The team slapped that nickname on him over beers after he drunkenly boasted that Georgia girls thought he was “sweeter than peaches and cream.” No matter how hard he tried, Peaches couldn’t shake that handle. It stuck to him like Super Glue.

Gerrit made his way to the CO’s hooch, raised in the middle of the compound the Marines had taken over for the duration of Operation Phantom Fury. Enclosed in concertina wire and earthen bunkers, the battalions’ nerve center consisted of green-canvassed tents enclosed by waist-high sandbag walls. Headquarters seemed to be drowning in waves of dust raised by passing trucks, Humvees, and other motorized vehicles.

Gerrit rapped on the door to the major’s quarters, a plywood entryway that led to the commander’s tent. “Permission to enter, sir.”

A growled response from within led him to believe permission had been granted. Inside, Major Jack Thompson sat at a folding table, maps spread out in front of him.

“Sir, received your message. My unit just returned.”

“Take a load off, Lieutenant.” Major Thompson pointed his chin toward a folding chair next to his desk. He peeled off his reading glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. Close-cropped dark hair dusted with gray and a wrinkled weather-tanned face gave no hint as to Thompson’s age. “G2 updated me on your run-in yesterday. Good job calling it in, sitting tight, and keeping your troops out of harm’s way.”

“Thanks, sir. Good men. Good Marines.”

Thompson frowned. “They are, but that’s not why I called you here, Gerrit.”

Hearing the major call him by his first name made Gerrit tense. He waited for the man to continue.

“I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news.” Thompson turned, facing him. “There’s no easy way to say this, so I’ll just spit it out. I’ve just been advised your folks were killed in a car bomb two weeks ago. Somewhere in the Seattle area. And your uncle … he turned up missing.”

A chill grabbed Gerrit’s chest, icy fingers refusing to let go. His world seemed to slow down and sound became distorted. Numbly, he stared at Thompson, finding words hard to form. “Why? Do…do they know who did this?”

Thompson shook his head. “I made a few calls and learned that Seattle PD’s running point on the case. The feds are assisting. So far, they don’t have squat.” The major leaned forward. “I’ve cut orders to send you back home.” He paused, looking down at his hands for a moment. “I’m sorry to add to this to your load…but they couldn’t wait on the funeral. Those idiots couldn’t seem to find you. A closed-casket affair. A few of your dad’s friends got together from MIT and buried them near your home in Boston.”

Thompson’s face seemed to soften. “Son, I want you to go home. Make your peace.”

Gerrit felt the chill disappear. “Sir, my men…the operation.”

The major waved his hand. “Our operation here in Fallujah is winding down, and orders will be coming down to rotate some of you guys in 1
^st
Recon Battalion stateside anyway. In your case, rotation just came a bit early.” He stood. “Go home, Gerrit. Take care of your family.”

Gerrit eased to his feet. “Sir, I have no more family. Everyone’s dead or missing.”

Thompson placed a hand on Gerrit’s shoulder. “You got your father’s Irish looks and his ruddy brown hair, but you have your mother’s smile. They were good folks.”

Gerrit shot him a quizzical look. He never knew the major knew his folks.

“I met them years ago at one of those highfalutin’ D.C. parties. We kept in touch over the years. Once your dad learned I was your CO, he’d drop me a line once in a while to see how you were holding up.”

Something seemed to make the older man draw back. After a moment, Thompson continued. “Go home and take care of the dead, son. Your mission here’s finished.”

“But—”

“That’s an order, Marine.”

Gerrit stiffened and saluted before turning to leave.

“And may God have your back.”

Gerrit closed the door behind him without responding.

The sun was just rising, casting a golden hue as it chased the shadows of night toward the west. Black, acrid smoke rose in the distance. He heard a helicopter whirl past. An overpowering smell of diesel fuel hung in the air, a part of the stench of war wherever men and machines clashed in battle.

Unclenching his fist, he reached into his pocket and withdrew a pocket watch his father gave him the day he received his doctorate degree from MIT. He flicked the watch open and gritted his teeth as he studied the photo of his mother and father attached to the lid, protected by glass. They were smiling back, proud of their son, enjoying a moment of academic achievement as the last remaining member of the O’Rourke clan earned the right to be called
doctor
. They could call each other that now—but they never did. Status did not mean much inside their family circle.

And then—with a grimace—he remembered the last time he saw his dad. The day before he shipped to Iraq for this last tour of duty. Angrily, his father implored him to remain at the university, to help him with a research project clouded in secrecy. “I have connections; I can get you assigned to work here with me.”

When Gerrit pressed for details, his father refused to divulge the nature of the research without Gerrit’s promise to help. Instead, Gerrit refused to allow his father to intercede. He knew he was needed here—in Iraq—serving with his men. It would be the last time he and his father spoke to each other in this life.

Whatever path Gerrit traveled, death and war seemed to hover. Now this dismal road led to Seattle. Car bomb? Why? How?

He trudged toward the tent where his men were most likely fast asleep. Tiredness and sadness unbearably weighed him down. The major’s news had just shaken Gerrit’s world off its axis, and in that final jolt, he felt all alone. He was the one who should have been in harm’s way. Not his folks. Not in America.

As he reached his tent, Gerrit paused and looked at the rising sun before reaching for the door. He must start packing for the trip home, even though only the dead waited for him there.

Seattle, Washington, December, Present Day

A
sense of trouble seemed to bear down on him as hard as the chilly blast of wind off the water. Gerrit O’Rourke pulled his navy-blue pea coat tighter, fending off a face-numbing gust straight off the Puget Sound. Leaning over the railing, he appeared to be watching the ferry’s bow plowing through swelling waves. Instead, he stole a look along the deck, studying other red-faced strangers in the crowd, small groups of commuters and tourists.

No informant yet. No killers trailing behind.

A comforting bulge beneath his coat—a holstered semi-auto .40 Smith & Wesson— gave him confidence as he thought of Nico Petrosky and the man’s trigger-happy goons. The Russian crime boss planted eyes and ears everywhere—even in law enforcement.

The informant’s voice had sounded tense over the phone. Gerrit agreed to this meeting because he sensed trouble. On the flip side, it would not be the first time this guy, plastered on drugs or alcohol, feigned danger while demanding more money.

Nico Petrosky was an animal. A wealthy animal. The man had been in Gerrit’s sights ever since he joined the police department. Even before he was hired though, he never revealed this fact to the background investigators. The name emerged again a few years back when Gerrit, alerted by a tip from the LAPD’s vice squad, found a shipping container stored on the docks in Seattle, waiting for transport to San Francisco. Inside, they found twenty Russian girls—ages ten to fifteen—cowering inside, half starved. The girls were bound for the sexual slave market on both the East and West coasts.

He found the body of one girl—barely ten years old—curled up in a ball. The coroner would later determine that the girl died from pneumonia and starvation. The sight still haunted him. He swore that day to hunt down those responsible for this atrocity. The girl’s death and leads from the container led to Nico Petrosky. He knew this dirtbag benefited from these crimes, but so far, Gerrit’s unit had not been able to prove it.

A chrome-glazed December sky hovered as if warning of pending trouble, darkness only a few hours away. He cast a glance toward sheltered passengers, comfortably ensconced behind thick-plated windows, customers bellying up to the bar for another round to ward off the cold. No one looked familiar. Beyond, Seattle’s skyline twinkled with illumination across the waves, beacons of light spewing from high-rises, growing brighter by the moment across a darkening sky.

The city’s silhouette brought a knot to his stomach, a reminder of the past that drew him to this seaport. Painful memories muscled in on him like the jostling crowd he was watching right now. Wrenching his attention back to the present, Gerrit suppressed those memories, pushing them deep inside. He glanced around once more for the informant.

“Maybe a no-show?” he whispered into a mike hidden near his shirt collar.

Looking toward the upper deck, he spotted Mark Taylor, another Seattle PD detective, shaking his head. Taylor’s rich, dark skin stood out among the crowd of pale white commuters standing around him, the only African American assigned to the squad when Gerrit joined the unit.

It had been seven years since Gerrit left the military and surprised everyone when he applied as an officer with Seattle. He’d worked his way into special assignments, always focusing on positioning himself within the department to investigate his parent’s bombing. And now he was working intelligence. The first day they teamed up together, Taylor took one look at him and shook his head.

“This ain’t gonna work, bro. A military guy with a college degree and a
brotha
from Chicago’s Southside just smacks of trouble.” They worked out their differences over time, Gerrit finally managing to overcome Taylor’s suspicions.

Gerrit keyed his mike. “Did you know that of the 70 percent of people who died in boating accidents in 2009, 84 percent did not wear life jackets?”

Taylor’s voice came through a transmitter lodged in Gerrit’s right ear. “What are the stats on how many cops shot their partners while traveling on a ferry boat? Do you realize how cold it is up here?”

“Chill out. Until today, zero cops have fired on their partners while riding on any watercraft.”

“If we don’t end this soon, I may change those stats. How ’bout we call it quits? This guy’s in the wind.”

Gerrit turned away, resting his arms on the wooden railing. “Might as well stay with it until we hit the dock.” They were about fifteen minutes out of Seattle’s Pier 50 terminal, heading to Bainbridge Island.

He glanced over the crowd one more time and saw a familiar face sliding through the throng. “Got ’em, Mark. Coming my way at three o’clock. Where did this guy come from? Hiding in the john?”

Two clicks signaled Taylor understood. Gerrit pushed off the railing, one hand ready to reach under his coat for his S&W.

The informant—a gaunt, birdlike creature with raven-black hair and even darker eyes—sidled alongside a moment later. Clothes hung on the man like a straw-filled scarecrow in the middle of a cornfield. A tanned fleece jacket with blotches of dark grease flapped in the gusty wind like a seagull trying to take off.

As Birdman leaned closer, Gerrit caught a whiff of skid-row perfume—wine and urine, overpowered by fear-drenching sweat. Birdman, real name
Gregori
in the snitch file, seemed to be coming unglued.

Cautiously, Gerrit eyed the informant, watching the guy’s eyes and hands for any sign of danger. “What happened to you? You’re a mess.”

The man next to him did not even resemble the lab rat Gerrit had rolled as an informant. He studied Gregori’s lifestyle, his appetites, and found the man’s Achilles heel: money and a promise of a new life. The man standing before him seemed to have lost his nerve after stealing from Nico. Gerrit had not heard from him in weeks. Now he knew where Gregori must have been hiding. In a bottle somewhere deep in a skid-row sewer.

“I th-think someone’s on to m-me. I run,” the informant stuttered, his lips cracked and dry. “I think dis whole thing mistake.” His Russian accent and wine-influenced English dropped and smashed words together like a giant blender.

“Gregori, stay cool. You’re the one who called me. Said you made copies of what Nico stole.” Sometimes he needed to speak to the informant as if he were communicating with a child. “If you’re not blowing smoke, then we’re almost to the finish line. And you’re off to Witness Protection and a new life. Don’t blow it now.”