Slowly we drove along the shipyard’s deserted streets, littered with empty work sheds, unused warehouses, desolate barracks. None of us said a word as we drove. Whatever work was still being done at the yard hadn’t yet begun for the day and whatever guards were supposed to have been patrolling with the Military Working Dogs had conveniently chosen some other beat to pound. We passed a tractor-trailer parked by the road, its back open, the trailer empty. We passed four garbage trucks parked one after the other, their cabs dark. We drove beneath a soaring elevated section of Interstate 95 and then over a bridge, with giant green towers to lift the span vertically and allow approaching ships to enter. As we passed over the bridge, to the left we could see the reserve basin, holding dozens of mothballed gray-painted ships, frigates and cruisers and supply ships and tankers, a veritable fleet. I felt just then as intrusive as a Soviet spy during the Cold War.

We drove straight until we reached a huge deserted dry dock, surrounded by green and yellow mobile cranes, and turned left, past a vacant parking lot, past shuttered warehouses, the streets and the lots all criss-crossed with railroad tracks. As we drove I looked to my right and saw a startling sight, battleships, a pair of battleships, huge and empty, their sixteen-inch guns lowered to horizontal. I could just make out the name of the one closest to shore: Wisconsin. Past still more warehouses and then another dry dock, the sides of this one not vertical but tiered and its bottom red with rust. At the edge of this dry dock we turned right and stopped the car by a long low building and waited. In the Delaware River, right in front of us, were two naval cargo ships, the sharp edges of their prows pointing straight at our car. I didn’t know what we were waiting for, but I knew enough not to ask. The windshield steamed over from our breaths. We sat in silence until the cell phone in Schmidty’s jacket beeped. He opened it, listened for a moment, and shut it again.

“It’s all in place,” he said.

“Time to claim the trophy,” said Calvi.

Four car doors opened and we climbed out of the Lincoln. Cressi took his huge gun from his belt, slapped open the cylinder, closed it again with a flick of his wrist. Anton pulled a small semiautomatic from his boot and chambered a round. The two Cubans unstrapped assault weapons from beneath their pant legs, flipped opened the skeleton metal stocks, and locked them in place. They both took two long clips from their pockets, each fitting one into his weapon and the second into his belt. Calvi reached into the glove compartment of his car and took out a revolver, checking it carefully before sticking it into the pocket of his long black raincoat. The sound of oiled metal clicked about us like a wave of wasps.

“Do I get anything?” I asked.

“You ever shoot a gun before, Vic?” asked Calvi.

“No,” I said.

Cressi snickered.

“Then forget about it,” said Calvi. “I don’t need you shooting my foot off. The girl stays in the car and I want one of the Cubans with her. She is not to leave the car under any circumstances, is that understood?”

Caroline looked at me with panic and I tried to calm her with a quiet motion of my hand. Anton gave directions in Spanish and one of the Cubans took hold of her and pushed her back into the car.

“What are you going to do with the girl?” I asked.

“We’re taking care of her,” said Calvi, slamming her door and shucking his shoulders.

“Maybe I should be the one to guard her,” I suggested.

Cressi stared at me for a long moment. “Don’t go weak on me now, Vic. You’re coming. It’s time for you to earn your place in the new order of things. Got it?”

I nodded sheepishly.

“Good,” said Calvi. “Where or whether you stand at the end it’s up to you. Got it?” He turned to face the others. “You boys ready?”

There were nods and more well-oiled clicks.

“Then let’s get it done.”

We stepped into the street and lined up five wide before we started walking toward the cargo ships. Anton Schmidt, with his thick glasses and his porkpie hat cocked low, then Walter Calvi, with his bristly hair and his long black coat, then me, trembling uncontrollably, then Peter Cressi, his Elvisine features tight and his eyes lethal, and then the Cuban, his face impassive and the assault rifle calmly held in front of him like a tennis racket at the ready. Side by side we walked.

“What’s going to happen to the girl?” I said to Calvi as we continued to walk.

“Forget about the girl, we’re taking care of her.”

“It’s over. You don’t need to kill her any more.”

“What are you, an idiot?” he said just as we were about to reach the river. “I told you we was taking care of her, not killing her. Her father is paying us to protect her, which is what the hell we’re doing.”

I didn’t have time to respond to that revelation before we reached the wharf at the river and wheeled about in line to the left so that, still five wide, we were walking now toward Pier Four. I glanced to the side and saw the Lincoln, saw the Cuban leaning against the front fender, watching us go, saw Caroline’s silhouette inside, saw it all before a wall from a warehouse blocked the view. I turned my head and all thoughts about Kingsley Shaw and his pact with Calvi fled as I saw what lay ahead of us.

Aircraft carriers. Two of them. As big and as imposing as anything I had ever seen before. Aircraft carriers. Great gray fortresses sitting heavy and still in the water, their high flat flight decks towering over the pier between them. Aircraft carriers. Jesus. When Anton Schmidt had mentioned two old ships on either side of the pier I had imagined two little gray putt-putts, not aircraft carriers. They loomed ever more huge as we walked closer to the pier and I could make out the names painted on their gray paint. Forrestal, read the one closest to us, its sharp prow and flat deck pointing toward the shore, and the ship docked on the far side of the pier, its bow pointing to the center of the river, was the Saratoga. I seemed to remember something about the supercarrier Forrestal burning off the coast of North Vietnam, killing more than a hundred sailors, and now here it was. The Forrestal and the Saratoga. I was still gawking when we reached the pier and wheeled around once again, this time to our right, maintaining our line as we began our walk onto Pier Four itself.

The two aircraft carriers rose huge on either side of us, their flight decks reaching beyond the cement surface of the pier, and right between them was the massive hammerhead crane, rising twice as high as the carriers’ flight towers, the crane standing between them like a guard, rusted and decrepit, more than twelve stories high with a huge red-and-white trailer on top. Parked before the crane was a white Cadillac, its side turned toward us. And just in front of the car, standing in the shadows of the great naval vessels, four men all in a row, waiting.

We kept walking, straight down the pier, toward the four men and the Cadillac. I looked up at the jutting decks of the aircraft carriers on either side of us. There was nothing to see. Anton Schmidt’s ambush was well hidden. As we moved closer I could identify the four figures before us. Enrico Raffaello stood at the middle of the car, a black cape around the shoulders of his tan suit, leaning on a cane gripped in his left hand, a black leather satchel in his right. On one side of him was Lenny Abromowitz, Raffaello’s driver, sartorially splendid in yellow pants and a green plaid jacket. On the other side of Raffaello, in a black suit, standing erect as a pole and perfectly at ease, was Earl Dante. Beside Earl Dante was his weightlifter bodyguard.

When we were fifteen yards away from Raffaello, Anton Schmidt told us to stop and we did. We stared at them and they stared at us and something ugly hung in the air between us.