Southern Poison (18 page)

In the half-hour to follow, the property became a jovial, bustling get-together in a whirl of activity, handshakes, and hugs. Air thick with the smells of perfumed people, cooking food, and fresh flowers—the flowers were everywhere—blew over the grounds while servers circulated with trays of mint lemonade. A circle of well-manicured guests surrounded the secretary of Defense and another enveloped the mayor of New York City.

I was pretending to take some photographs when Lady Lizzy strolled up. “Why, hello, Jersey,” she said, without the usual exclamation point.

“What, no
dahling
this time?”

Tiny droplets of sweat popped through heavy makeup on her upper lip. She dabbed at them with a cocktail napkin. “Blackmail disagrees with me.”

“But I’m here for a very good reason, if that makes you feel any better. Oh, and if anyone asks, I’m one of your photographers.”

She eyed my camera. “My photographers use much more sophisticated equipment than that.”

“Yeah, well. They probably have their cameras powered on, too.”

Fanning her face with a program, she flounced off.

Ten minutes before the wedding ceremony was to start, servers collected empty drink cups and ushers appeared to escort people down to the beach area. Rows of folding, white resin chairs formed
a semicircle around a decorated stage, the first three rows marked
RESERVED
for family and VIPs. A fancy public address system with elevated speakers ensured that everyone would be able to hear just fine. Press pass hanging around my neck, I positioned myself close to the water, as though I planned to shoot photographs of the wedding party as they walked down the makeshift aisle.

“JJ,” I whispered into my radio.

“Go ahead,” she answered.

“Anything yet?”

“Negative. Not a damn thing, and I’ve been scouring every back lawn, rooftop, and beach walker I can see, and I can see pretty much everything. With these binoculars, I could count the hairs on a gnat’s ass at five hundred meters.”

“Ox? You see anyone?”

“Negative,” came his reply.

The assembled crowd instantly hushed when the wedding march blared from the speakers and the bridal procession began with a young flower girl throwing handfuls of rose petals on the sand. I pretended to snap a few photographs before returning my attention to the water. As scheduled, a squarish spec came into view and, as it grew larger, it began to take the form of a ship.

I moved farther away from the stage and took some more faux photos. “JJ, do you see the boat coming southbound through the channel?”

She came back after several seconds. “Affirmative. It’s the container ship, with two Coast Guard escorts.”

“Dammit,” I muttered to myself. The wedding progressed with two men in robes officiating. A sniffling bridesmaid dabbed at tears. Carrying a wailing baby, an apologetic mother inched her way out of the crowd. One of the priests said something funny and everyone laughed. About a mile away, the container ship passed Oak Island and continued our way. It was time to get everybody
inland and my mind vacillated about the best way to do so. I’d probably need to take the microphone from the dueling priests.

“JJ,” Ox’s voice came over the radio.

“Go ahead.”

“Get a visual on the top of the lighthouse that we passed coming in. The lantern room.” Old Baldy is an octagonal lighthouse built of bricks and plaster that has been inoperative since the early 1900s. I knew JJ had already checked it out, but maybe our mark wasn’t yet in place.

I was studying the tower when I noticed a woman staring at me with an odd expression. She nudged her companion and whispered something to him, after which he stared at me, too. I fiddled with my camera, as though changing the settings, and snapped a few more pretend photographs. Satisfied, the couple returned their attention to the bride and groom. The container ship grew steadily bigger.

“Male Caucasian, baseball cap, mirrored sunglasses,” JJ said. “Holding a small box … just pulled a retractable antenna out of it. Looks like the receiver my neighbor’s kid uses when he’s playing with his radio-controlled dune buggy.”

I took another photograph. “Ox?”

“Shouldn’t be anyone in there, unless he’s a maintenance person from the foundation that owns the lighthouse.”

“He look like maintenance?” I asked and took another picture.

“Nope,” came JJ’s reply.

The bride slid a ring on her man’s outstretched finger. The mother hurried back to her seat with a now-quiet baby. A parade of five pelicans sailed by, skimming the water in search of dinner.

“What’s he doing?” I asked.

“Just standing there,” JJ said. “Appears to be watching the house. No opticals.”

He wouldn’t need binoculars. He could see just fine when the ship passed by the house.

“Rangefinder says I’m 882 meters away from him,” she continued. “Virtually no wind. Clean shot. I’m good to go.”

“Ox?” I questioned.

“Your call, Barnes.”

“Take him out, JJ. Do it now. Head shot.”

The audience of nearly two hundred happy people clapped and whistled when the newly wedded couple embraced. A display of low-level fireworks went off behind them and the crowd clapped louder. Just when the groom kissed his bride, JJ’s Barrett went off and it sounded like a bottle rocket being fired from a minicannon.

A surprised crowd looked around to see where the sound came from, unsure of what they’d heard. But with fireworks still popping and sounds echoing off the water, they went back to watching the newlyweds, who obliviously continued to kiss. When the couple stopped to wave to the crowd, everyone stood and the noise level inched up another notch. The secretary of Defense joined his daughter and son-in-law, taking a microphone from its stand on the podium.

He held up a hand to quiet the guests. “My wife and I want to thank all of you for coming to join our family on this most special, most memorable day,” he said.

The container ship grew big as it glided by, flanked by the Coast Guard patrol boats. After a few seconds of nothing exploding, my body went slack with relief. Adrenaline draining from my system, I hustled to the house to find JJ. Gear bag slung over her shoulder and camera and tripod in hand, she met me in the backyard. “I’m ready for a drink. How about you?”

We got Ox on the radio. He was on a golf cart and said he’d pick us up in front of the house.

“So much for my drink,” JJ said, “and free drinks are the best kind. They’ve got the premium stuff, too.”

We heard the father droning on, as though he were at a political rally. “My job deals with protecting the freedoms that all Americans
enjoy, such as the freedom to cherish family and friends on a beautiful day like this,” the father continued. “And now, we invite everyone to stay for the reception and dinner.” He pointed to the sky, where a skydiver dropped from a small prop plane. “Look up and let’s give a big welcome to Chila, lead singer of Feather Heavy—my daughter’s favorite band!”

“My God,” JJ said. “They got Feather Heavy to perform?”

There were
oohs
and
ahs
and, when the bright yellow chute popped open, the younger people went wild. A screech of static sounded through the band’s speakers on the lawn, and the singer’s recognizable voice came through. “Congratulations, Janie and Daryl, this is Chila dropping in from above, and I have to say that, even from up here, you guys look beautiful!”

Janie squealed with delight.

“Join me on the back lawn, won’t you?” Chila said. “My band is ready and waiting, so let’s get started!” A thumping drum beat started and people began filtering to the lawn, where the band started to play as they watched their singer descend. Chila appeared to be right on target for a cordoned-off landing area.

JJ had managed to secure a shot of 1800 Silver tequila in a real glass and we were walking to the front of the house to meet Ox when another piercing screech of feedback sounded. The kind that makes people cringe. Then it happened. The ship blew with a deafening rumble. It started with a sharp crack that hurt my eardrums and in the microsecond of silence that followed—as we spun toward the source of the sound—the air-sucking stillness erupted into a violent explosion and blinding fireball. A wave of hot wind knocked us to the ground and sounds of windows shattering filled my ears. We scrambled upright and ran to the beach as a series of secondary explosions lit up the waterway and spit fiery chunks of steel and shrapnel into the air at lightning speed. Had the container ship not cleared the island and reached the mouth of the ocean, we’d be
dead. The bride and groom and all their guests would be dead. The lighthouse and numerous residential houses would be flattened. Stunned, we stood mesmerized by the show, gusts of searing heat engulfing our bodies, surging water rolling way past the high-water mark. Ox found us and led us away from the shore.

“It was the damn jumper,” JJ shouted over the noise. “Chila did it.”

I rubbed my eyes, to rid them of the green and white spots in my vision. “That makes no sense.”

“Her special, long-distance wireless microphone must have been on the same frequency as the bomber’s receiver. Chila flipped on her microphone pack to the crowd as she floated down.
That’s
what set off the detonator on the ship. The first time she spoke, it didn’t do anything. But as she came closer in, her signal was strong enough to reach the ship.”

“Let’s get out of here, ladies,” Ox said and I realized he was right. Everyone else had run away from the explosions, fearing for their safety. Not toward the beach like we had. The vessel was a good distance away, but not far enough when you considered the cargo on board.

Another thundering explosion rocked us and an instant later, something whizzed by my head. A palm tree exploded behind us.

“Anti-tank missiles,” Ox yelled. “The fire is setting them off. Let’s go!”

We dropped to the sand and belly crawled our way to the street—not a graceful task in a dress and sandals—as a few more missiles whizzed overhead. Once in the road, we hiked to the marina, boarded
Incognito
, and headed up the shipping channel toward Wilmington. Police and rescue boats flew by us in the other direction and we could see an orange medical chopper in the distance. There was no way any of the container ship crew survived. Or those on the Coast Guard boats. The recovery efforts would not be pretty.

Other than the
dead man in the Bald Head Island lighthouse and a heart attack victim who was eating a grilled hamburger on his lanai two houses down from the wedding, the only casualties were the crews on the container ship and Coast Guard boats. Still, thirteen people were dead as a result of the explosion, not to mention the damage done to nearby houses and the shipping channel. Luckily, Chila had been blown onto the roof of a pool house and survived with only a sprained ankle. The media couldn’t get enough of her, especially since she was the only one talking. Officials wouldn’t comment on the disaster, understandable since they didn’t have a clue what caused it. The camera operator who was videotaping the wedding had enough foresight to point his digital video camera at the exploding ship before he ran, and the footage was now airing on every major network.

From start to finish, it took six minutes for the container ship to sink, although the underwater explosions continued for another ten minutes. Shore damage was extensive and the Army Corps of
Engineers worked around the clock to clear the channel. Under heavy security, teams of specialists worked to recover bodies, the sunken vessel, and its scattered contents. And MOTSU was crawling with uniforms, including a special investigative team from the Department of Defense. They didn’t know details, but Ashton had been obligated to suggest that an attempt to kill the Sec Def had been curtailed.

“Tell me about the dead man in the lighthouse,” Ashton said. We sat at a corner table in the Block. I picked up on at least two of his people, pretending to be customers. One drank coffee and read the newspaper. Another younger one listened to an iPod, acting like he was waiting for a friend. I didn’t necessarily mind that people were following my every move and possibly listening to my conversations. It made me feel important, even though the bride’s father now had a private security detail that put mine to shame.

“I thought the fellow in the lighthouse was probably John.”

“Negative.”

Crap. John was still out there, madder than ever, and probably planning to take out his anger on me. I drank some Coors Light from the bottle. “Then I don’t know who the man was.”

“Shot through the head with something big and fast. We’ll probably never find the slug. Was Joan Jackson on the island, by chance?”

I took another swallow. Ashton should know better than to even ask such a question.

“Okay, then.” He did a mini cough that wasn’t quite his annoyed clearing-the-throat sound. “Let’s try it this way. Tell me everything you know about the incident.”

I could have started with, “I told you so,” but that would only serve to piss him off. “As you know, I suspected that a detonator had been planted on one of the containers in the outgoing shipment. Since the exact timing of when the ship would pass by the
target house couldn’t have been known, we determined that the device would have to be command detonated.”

“We?”

“Just a term I like to use. Me and my alter ego. My
hunches,”
I couldn’t resist adding.
The same hunches that weren’t viable enough for you to stop the outgoing ship to begin with
, I thought.

Ashton did the throat-clearing ritual. “Go on.”

“So we attended the wedding to take a look around. The container ship was passing by just as we saw a man up in the tower, watching the house and holding a remote-control device. Fortunately, somebody shot him, and the ship passed by without incident. Saving a few hundred lives, by the way.”

He cleared his throat again, defensive when he should have been thankful. “Unfortunately,” I continued, “that’s when the singer from Feather Heavy made her grand entrance by parachuting in. She was equipped with a long-range wireless microphone. It was tuned to the same frequency as the receiver on the ship. There was a big bang and you know the rest.”