Abuse of Power - Michael Savage [50]
Damn.
Jack sighed. He knew Copeland had a reputation as a hard drinker, but had always thought of him as a man in control. And a drunken phone call at three in the morning was completely out of character.
He tried to think of who he might call to get Copeland some help—family or something—but when it came down to it, Jack really didn’t know all that much about him. Especially after two years of no contact.
As he racked his brain trying to figure out who he might call, the phone rang again.
He clicked it on. “Bob? Is that you?”
No static this time, but no response, either.
“Bob?”
Several seconds ticked by, then the line went dead, and Jack silently cursed again, wishing there was some way to find out where Copeland was. Maybe call the police to make sure he didn’t wind up in a gutter somewhere.
But what would he tell them?
Where would they start looking?
Then it struck Jack. What if there was more to this than a night of simple overindulgence? After what he’d found hanging in his shower, he had to wonder if it was possible that this was some kind of a cry for help.
Could Copeland be in a different kind of trouble?
But when Jack thought it through, that didn’t make much sense. If Bob Copeland were in danger, why would he be calling in a drunken stupor? And there were plenty of people he could call besides Jack. The guy had once worked for the Pentagon, for God’s sake.
This was a simple case of drunk dialing, is all. And there’s nothing worse than a drunk dialer.
Maybe Jack wasn’t the only one who had demons to contend with. He just hoped the guy got home safely and was sober enough to make their meeting tomorrow.
They had a lot to talk about.
14
Jack went back to the Sea Wrighter the next morning. When he stepped onto the deck, he discovered he’d had another visitor in the night. He found a package about the size of a shirt box, wrapped in brown paper and tucked against the starboard pilothouse door. There was no name, no address, no writing of any kind.
Odd, he thought. What the hell was this all about?
He raised it slightly, feeling with his fingers for a minelike depression plate underneath. Nothing. He kept it level as he raised it. There was no lopsided weight to indicate packed explosives, no faint chemical smell, no ticking, no wires that he could see under the wrapping. Snatching it up, he let himself in, then moved into the galley and laid it on the table. He tore away the brown paper. All he found inside was a briefcase containing a swath of papers. Government authorization forms, from the looks of them, generated by the Department of Defense.
Jack paused when he saw them.
Was this something he should be looking at?
The authorization involved a special transport mission. On August 20 of this year, a shipment of highly classified experimental hydrazine-based rocket fuel was to be carried from a facility Jack wasn’t even aware of, designated by number only. For security reasons, the fuel would be traveling by tanker truck rather than the usual rail transportation.
According to the timetable, part of that journey would involve passing over the Golden Gate Bridge at approximately 2200 hours that night, and Jack got the impression that the Bridge Authority had not been notified of this shipment. The truck itself would be marked as a milk tanker.
In other words, this was a so-called black shipment. Okay; Jack had no doubt that happened all the time.
The question was, why had this package been left on his deck, and who had left it?
Searching through the package again, Jack found a business card for a Linda Hodgkins of the Department of Defense. After mulling it over, Jack flipped open his cell phone and called the number.
It was picked up after three rings. “Yes?”
“Is this Linda Hodgkins with the Department of Defense?”
A hesitation. “Yes, who is this?”
“Ms. Hodgkins, my name is Jack Hatfield and it seems a package of yours has been left on my boat. Would you know anything about that?”
A longer hesitation. “Copeland said you can be trusted.