Chapter 8 - The Breach at the Marina
You would think that when the federal government hits an empire, the ground-level mercenaries scatter like roaches.
Most of them do.
The lawyers run to their partners' offices to draft immunity proffers. The accountants suddenly remember that they have a family reunion in Belize. The local politicians discover that they have urgent business at a municipal conference in Phoenix.
But every corrupt family has one or two people who are too stupid to run and too violent to understand that the war is already over.
At Port Mercer Marine Repair, the tide had turned by two in the afternoon.
The lake was gray, chopped into whitecaps by a twenty-knot northeasterly wind that was pushing three-foot swells into the mouth of the slipway. The corrugated steel siding of the Butler building was rattling with that steady, rhythmic drumbeat that usually meant a late-summer gale was rolling in from Wisconsin.
I was under the Bertram 31, lying on a creeper with a three-quarter-inch breaker bar, trying to crack the bronze nuts on the port strut.
The side door of the shop—the small steel pass-through door next to the waste oil tanks—clicked open.
It didn't bang. The wind didn't catch it.
Someone had turned the handle with deliberate, two-handed pressure, stepped inside onto the oily concrete, and pulled it shut until the latch engaged without a sound.
I didn't slide out from under the boat.
I stayed completely still, my back flat against the vinyl pad of the creeper, my right hand resting on the heavy steel shaft of the breaker bar.
Through the narrow gap between the boat’s keel and the floor, I could see two pairs of feet.
Not work boots.
These were tactical boots—five-hundred-dollar Salomon Quest hiking boots, clean, no grease, the soles designed for dry rock and asphalt.
"Mave?" a voice called out.
It was Kurt Vance—not my Vance from Washington, but Kurt "Buster" Vance, a second cousin of Graham’s who ran a "private security consulting" firm out of Holland, Michigan. In reality, Buster was a cashiered former deputy sheriff who had been forced out of the county eight years ago after three separate civil rights settlements involving excessive force during drug interdictions.
Graham kept him on a monthly retainer to handle "discreet site logistics"—which meant Buster was the guy who broke the windows of union organizers' trucks and followed city council members who asked too many questions about zoning variances.
"Mave," Buster said again, his voice echoing off the high steel rafters. "We know you’re in here, sweetheart. Your truck’s outside."
The second man didn't speak. I could hear the faint, synthetic *scritch* of nylon cargo pants moving through the narrow aisle between the tool cabinets.
"Graham wants to have a conversation, Mave," Buster continued, his boots moving slowly down the center aisle, past the Boston Whaler. "A real conversation. Without the feds. Without the cameras. He thinks there’s been an overreaction. He’s willing to make things right. But we need that backup drive you’ve got tucked away."
I didn't answer.
I reached up with my left hand, caught the lower edge of the Bertram’s chine, and pulled myself an inch deeper into the shadow of the hull.
With my right hand, I unclipped the P30 from my belt.
I didn't rack the slide—there was already a round in the chamber, the hammer resting on the double-action notch.
"Come on, Mave," Buster said. His voice was closer now—ten feet away, right at the corner of the boat’s transom. "You’re a mechanic. You’re a smart girl. You don't want to make this worse than it already is. Declan’s already in holding. Harlow’s having a nervous breakdown in Grand Rapids. It’s just you and us. We take the drive, we take the local server, and everybody goes home."
The second man appeared on the left side of the keel.
He was younger, thick-necked, wearing a black soft-shell jacket and a baseball cap pulled down low over his eyes. He had a collapsible steel baton in his right hand, the tip resting against his thigh.
He bent down to look under the boat.
Our eyes met.
For a fraction of a second, he looked surprised. He hadn't expected to find a woman lying on a creeper in the dark; he had expected to find someone hiding behind the toolboxes, crying.
Then he saw the black muzzle of the P30 pointed directly between his eyebrows.
"Don't move," I said.
He didn't move. Every muscle in his neck locked into stone. His eyes dilated until the brown irises were thin rings around the black pupils.
"Drop the baton," I whispered.
The steel baton slipped from his fingers, hitting the concrete with a sharp, ringing clang.
"Buster!" the kid shouted.
Buster’s boots scrambled on the concrete at the transom.
I kicked off the floor with my heels, the creeper shooting backward out from under the boat like a sled on ice. As my shoulders cleared the transom, I rolled to the left, coming up onto one knee behind an eight-hundred-pound drum of hydraulic fluid.
Buster was five feet away, his hand inside his jacket, reaching for something tucked into a shoulder holster.
"Buster," I said.
He froze.
He was looking down the barrel of a Heckler & Koch held in a two-handed combat grip that was as rock-steady as a bench vise.
"You’re on private property, Buster," I told him. My voice had that flat, dead rhythm that makes men realize their life insurance policy is about to become active. "You’re carrying a concealed weapon during the commission of an unannounced entry into a secure commercial facility. Under Michigan Compiled Laws 780.972, commonly known as the Self-Defense Act, I have no duty to retreat, and I am legally authorized to use deadly force to prevent the commission of a violent felony on my premises."
Buster swallowed. His Adam's apple bobbed up and down over his tight collar.
"Mave," he said, his hands slowly coming out of his jacket, palms forward, fingers spread wide. "Take it easy. Nobody’s looking to get hurt here."
"You came into my shop while my five-year-old daughter is having her face surgically rebuilt at Springfield General," I said. "You came here to steal evidence that belongs to a federal grand jury. And you brought a twenty-two-year-old gym rat with a steel pipe."
"Graham told us—"
"Graham is currently sitting in a holding cell at the Gerald R. Ford Federal Building, waiting for his arraignment on sixteen counts of wire fraud, bribery, and racketeering," I said. "Graham doesn't pay your retainer anymore, Buster. The Department of Justice seized his operating accounts three hours ago. If you pull that trigger, you aren't doing it for five grand. You’re doing it for free, and you’re doing it for twenty-five to life."
Buster looked at the gun. He looked at my eyes.
He had spent twenty years bullying shoplifters and drunk college kids in Ottawa County. He knew what a cop looked like when they were scared; he knew what a husband looked like when he was angry.
He had never seen a mother who was trained by the Defense Intelligence Agency to dismantle human beings for a living.
"Turn around," I told him.
Buster didn't argue. He turned around, his hands held high above his head.
"Down on your knees. Cross your ankles. Interlock your fingers behind your head."
He went down onto the cold concrete without a word.
The kid under the boat had already crawled out, his hands flat against the floor, his face pressed against the oily dust, shaking so hard his baseball cap was vibrating against the floorboards.
I pulled two pairs of heavy-duty plastic zip-ties from the parts shelf behind the hydraulic drum.
Two minutes later, both of them were hog-tied to the steel support columns of the Bertram’s cradle, their wrists and ankles lashed behind their backs with five-hundred-pound-tensile-strength nylon.
I picked up Buster’s phone from where it had fallen on the floor.
I unlocked it with his thumb, opened the messaging app, and found the last text from Graham Thatcher, sent at 6:15 AM before the feds hit the front gates:
> *Clean the shop. Find the drives. If she resists, handle it.*
I took a screenshot, forwarded the image to Agent Chen’s secure terminal in Grand Rapids, and set the phone back on the drum.
Then I walked over to the shop sink, turned on the cold water, and washed the black grease from my knuckles for the second time that day.
May you like
Outside, the lake wind shrieked through the cedar swamp, driving the first drops of the afternoon rain against the corrugated steel roof like a handful of gravel thrown against a drum.
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