by Matthew Rief
He also told us about Old Havana: where we had to eat, what we had to see, what to avoid. He also told us that we’d arrived right in the middle of the Carnival de la Habana, the annual vibrant carnival, which was going to kick into full swing later that afternoon.
He also explained that Old Havana was centered around five main plazas and that it has some of the most beautiful architecture in all of the Americas. The architecture, the classic vehicles, and the overall vibe when we entered Old Town made me feel like I’d gone back in time fifty years.
The driver’s laid-back and warm personality was a nice change of pace from the tensioned exchange in the bar and the fast and furious chase that had welcomed us to the country.
I gazed through the partly open window as mopeds revved chaotically. Locals chatted on steps. People coming and going out of businesses tucked in stairwells.
I’d read before that Cubans are some of the friendliest people on earth. Meeting the driver and looking at all the people as we passed by, it was easy to see how they’d garnered that reputation.
He dropped us off in front of Café Bohemia, along the southwestern edge of the Plaza Vieja. He explained that it had once been the main plaza in Havana and that it had been restored to look much like it had when it was originally laid out in 1559.
We paid and thanked him, then stepped out.
The plaza was beautiful. With ripples of intricate archways lining the lower levels of the surrounding buildings. Roughly an acre of smooth cobblestone, and an ornate fountain in the center. Small potted trees. A nice ocean breeze sweeping in from over the rooftops. A cat sleeping on a shaded ledge. A blend of various conversations, and the occasional distant honking car horn. Nearly every window from the second floor and up was accompanied by a small balcony with flowerpots.
A curious well-behaved dog trotted up and smelled me briefly. I petted him for a few seconds before he carried on about his day.
“There’s a bed-and-breakfast up there,” our driver said, pointing above a nearby café.
The upper part of the building he pointed at had classic windows with bright blue shutters. Looked nice, but also inconspicuous.
He smiled and waved, then drove off down the cobblestone street.
We headed for the café. Moving past a sea of tables with white umbrellas, we entered between two large support columns covered in flowering ivy.
Before giving in to our grumbling stomachs, we headed upstairs to book a room for the night. We were both too anxious to check Duke’s phone to eat. Being the rainy season, we had no trouble securing what the woman in charge called her favorite room. It was easy to see why. It was simple, but fresh and clean. And it had a large window and a balcony with a small table and chairs that overlooked the entire plaza. From up there, we could even see peekaboo views of the waterfront a few blocks away.
We paid in cash, using our fake IDs, and the friendly woman handed us the keys. When she was gone, I locked the door and set my backpack as well as the hard case on the bed. Ange and I sat beside each other on a small colorful couch. She pulled Duke’s phone from his pocket, and I grabbed my backpack and unzipped the small compartment.
Inside, I grabbed a small pen recorder/radio transceiver. I also grabbed a specialty hacking device that had been developed by an old friend of mine named Murph. The genius computer wizard had given me the device years back as a reward for saving his life when he’d fallen into dangerous hands. There was nothing else like it in the world—a handheld device that could be used to track the location of any cellphone during an active call.
Ange went to the contacts first, a short endeavor given that there weren’t any.
“Burner phone,” she said.
I nodded, half expecting that.
She then went to the recent activity. There were a handful of sporadic calls spread out over the past three days. Ange started with the most recent, pressed the call button, then turned on the speakerphone.
I pressed record on my pen, wanting to catch every word of whoever answered. I also powered on the hacking device. But no one answered. After two rings, the line went dead. Ange tried again. Same result.
Scanning down, she tried the next three most recent calls. Nothing.
Ange was growing frustrated, and so was I. We weren’t exactly overflowing with leads. If Duke’s phone turned out to be a dead end, that meant we’d have to go back to the drawing board. It also most likely meant another trip to the dive bar over at the shipyard, where we’d have to fight our way to getting answers that might not even be there.
“They must know he’s been compromised,” Ange said.
It was a strong possibility. I glanced at my dive watch. It was half past five. That meant it had been about thirty minutes since Duke and his buddy had gone head-to-head with gravity and lost big-time. That’s a long time in the age of cellphones and the internet. Word of what had happened could have easily traveled all throughout their operation at that point. Since Duke was dead, that would mean they’d most likely block or ignore calls from his number.
Ange continued, trying a handful more before sighing and shaking her head. I was just about to rise to my feet and recommend lunch when a voice came over the small speaker, replacing the familiar pendulum drone of the ringing sound.
“What the hell do you want?” a rough masculine voice answered.
It was faint, but it sounded like the guy had an Australian accent.
I glanced at Ange, whose mouth had dropped open.
“Hello?” the guy barked. “Are you there, dickhead?”
There was a strange sound in the background. Sounded like metal clanging against metal. Distant music as well. And a few muffled male voices.
Ange and I looked at each other, then at the hacking device hooked up to the phone. It was working. It wasn’t like in the old police movies. We didn’t need to keep the line alive for a certain amount of time. The device could hack into the cell tower faster than we could say “está volao.”
It was a good thing too. A moment later, the guy hung up and the line went dead.
“What’s going on?” I asked, leaning closer to Ange.
She shook her head, then thought for a second.
“I know that voice,” she said. “That guy was on the boat back in the Keys. He was one of the guys who took Scarlett.”
TWENTY-THREE
“I’m sure of it, Logan,” Ange said. “He sounds exactly the same.”
I never doubted for a second whether she was right or not. Ange had great hearing and even better attention to subtle details when it came to people’s mannerisms.
She thought for a moment, then a lightbulb went off in her head.
“Flynn. That was his name.”
Ange leaned back into her chair and I watched as the hacking device did its job. Less than a minute after the call ended, the small LCD display gave us the guy’s coordinates. I grabbed my laptop and brought up a GPS. After quickly punching in the series of numbers, I pressed enter. The map of the world zoomed in on Cuba, then on the Miramar district, and pinned the guy’s position.
“He’s on Avenida Forty-Seven,” I said. “Two buildings south from the intersection with Forty-Nine Bravo.”
Ange performed a quick online search.
“It’s a gym,” she said.
I nodded.
“That would explain the noises in the background.”
“It’s called Gimnasio de Toros. Looks like it’s a pretty small place. Not much of an online presence.”
I brought up our location relative to the gym and saw that we were roughly four miles northeast from it. Or about a fifteen-minute cab ride.
I glanced at my watch. It was nearly 1800 and we’d had quite the day already. My stomach was grumbling, but the meal would have to wait. Trails can get cold quick. In my experience, if you have an opportunity, you need to nab it as fast as you can. In other words: strike while the iron’s hot.
Taking our phones, wallets, and handguns, we stashed my
backpack and the hard case in the closet, then locked up and headed back downstairs. We moved into the warm, humid early-afternoon air of the plaza. Most of the people were sitting in shaded areas around the perimeter or taking pictures in front of the fountain.
Two blocks west, we hailed a cab and told the driver to take us to El Bosque. It was a forest park along the Almendares River, just down the street from our real destination. A couple of foreigners dressed in casual clothes and asking a cab driver to take them to a gym wouldn’t add up. It would certainly be outside the norm, and we didn’t want to do anything that looked outside the norm.
We drove through the bustling downtown streets, our driver utilizing side roads, and reached our destination a few minutes under the GPS estimated time. After stepping out at the forest, we waited a few seconds for him to drive off. The park was beautiful, tall trees covered in bright green vines. The sounds of the distant flowing river filling the air.
Once the cab disappeared around a corner, we turned around and walked east out of the park and along a sidewalk. The gym was across the street and half a block away.
We moved past a few food cart vendors and took our first look at the place. It was small and slightly rundown, but not nearly as decrepit as the bar I’d walked into earlier that afternoon. It blended into its surroundings well, nestled between a bakery on one side and a narrow alley and a nail salon on the other. There were a few cars parked along the curb, but I assumed that there must be a parking lot nearby.
We took a leisurely lap around the block to scope out the place and to make sure that we weren’t being followed. Once back near the entrance, I switched on my pen transceiver and slid it into my back pocket. Ange would be listening in via a small radio with an earpiece.
We decided it was best that I take the lead again, given the fact that the guy who’d helped snatch Scarlett would probably recognize her. On the drive over, she’d given me a description of him. Tall, wide shoulders, short blond hair, blue eyes, a silver cross earring dangling from his left ear, and of course the Australian accent.
Once ready, I nodded to her, then turned and moved across the street. I pushed my way through the swinging front door and caught my first glimpse of the inside. It was bigger than I expected. A crowded room with a yellow rubber floor and scattered fitness machines from retro infomercials. The place smelled like dirty laundry.
I scanned the room but saw no one except an old guy wearing a baggy red tank top and a white headband and puffing a cigar while operating a noisy rowing machine. More than a little counterproductive.
I looked up at a few squeaking ceiling fans. In the back, I heard music, slamming weights, and low voices. The same sounds we’d heard in the background of the phone call. I only hoped that our guy Flynn hadn’t called it a day yet.
I moved across the main room, through a partition, and into the back, following the sounds. In the rear were all the free weights. A long rack of dumbbells. Four power towers. And an Olympic lifting station.
There were four guys in there hitting the weights hard and nodding to the rock music. They were all big, muscular, and young. They also appeared to love showing off their muscles. I estimated that they might have enough fabric in all four of their tank tops combined to make a normal tee shirt.
Two of them were dark-skinned. Two of them were white but tanned. None of them were blond.
“Hey, are you lost, pal?” one of the guys said.
He was spotting a guy on the bench press and helped him rattle the heavy bar back into place after his set.
All four sets of eyes looked to me at his words.
“No,” I replied.
I maintained my stride and scanned every inch of the room. There was an exit door in the back. A door to a bathroom or office to the right.
As I moved closer to the four guys, I noticed that they all had tattoos and visible scars. Something told me that they didn’t make their livings as personal trainers.
“No?” the guy said, raising his thick black eyebrows.
“I’m not lost,” I said flatly.
He rose to his feet, followed by the three others.
“What the hell is this moron’s deal?” he said to his buddies in Spanish, thinking that I couldn’t understand him.
He stepped toward me, got right in my face. He was a few inches taller and had about thirty pounds of muscle on me. Designer muscle, I hoped.
“If you’re not lost, then what the hell are you doing here?” he spat.
“I’m looking for somebody.”
The four guys paused, glanced at each other, then shook their heads.
Suddenly, I heard footsteps behind the closed door to my right. Then the door swung open on a squeaky hinge and a fifth guy stepped out with a cigarette in his mouth. He was big, like the others. Wide, muscular shoulders. Arms like most guys’ necks. And blond hair.
Blond hair and a silver cross earring.
“Who the hell are you looking for?” the newly arrived bodybuilder said.
Australian accent.
“You. I think.”
I fired off the response without skipping a beat.
He was taken aback by my response for only a fraction of a second. Then he tossed his half-burned cigarette aside, clenched his jaw, stormed toward me, and pointed a finger in my face.
“Look, asshole,” he growled. “I don’t know you. You come into my place and you act all suspicious. It’s the kind of shit that really pisses me off. Now, tell me what the hell you want or me and my boys are gonna see how many forty-five-pound plates we can drop on your head before your skull crushes to pieces.”
The four other guys closed in. They cracked their knuckles and necks, then narrowed their gazes at me.
“You met my wife,” I said.
The Aussie shot me a sinister smirk, then chuckled as he glanced around at his buddies.
“I’m sorry, mate. Women are just attracted to—”
“Minimal collateral damage,” I said, cutting him off. “That’s your philosophy, right? That’s what you told her anyway.”
His eye twitched at my words. An obvious tell. If we were in Vegas at a poker table, I’d have already had him beat.
He looked confused for a few seconds, then tried his best to brush it aside and compose himself. It was too late. He’d already verified everything I needed to know. He was the guy from the phone, and one of the guys on the boat that had taken Scarlett. He’d made it clear without saying a word.
“Unfortunately for you,” I continued, “we don’t share that philosophy. When it comes to assholes like you, I’m more of a maximum collateral damage kind of guy. So, you’ve got two choices. You can tell me where she is and maybe you and your boys will get out of this with your miserable bodies relatively intact. Or, you don’t tell me and I beat the shit out of all four of you right now in this smelly gym.”
It was a lie, of course. Regardless of whether they said anything or not, they were all about to get the beating of their lifetimes. They just didn’t know it yet. I never liked the taste of lies in my mouth. The only exception being when I said them to sorry excuses for men like these.
The Aussie went from confused to laughing maniacally.
“You’ve got some big balls coming up in here,” he said. “I don’t know how you managed to track me down. Bravo. But it was all for nothing. You’re never gonna see that girl again. That’s just a fact, American.”
“Tell me where she is,” I said, raising my voice. “This is your last chance.”
The guy laughed again.
He looked at his buddies and said, “Alright. Time to teach this guy a lesson. Then later we’ll stuff his body into a wood chipper.”
He motioned toward the doorway I’d entered from. The two metal doors slammed shut and were locked by the old guy I’d seen in the main room. He smiled and nodded back to the Aussie.
I was hoping to have Ange storm in and have my back. But it looked like a four-on-one fight was inevitable. Not the worst od
ds I’d ever faced. The only good thing was that since the bodybuilders all wore skintight clothing, I was able to see that none of them were armed. They were planning on beating me to a pulp with their knuckles.
A commercial over the radio in the corner ended and “Enter Sandman” began playing.
Fitting.
Suddenly, all four of them closed in on me. The white guy with the thick black eyebrows who I’d talked to at the beginning moved in ahead of the others. He was pissed off and clearly wanted dibs.
I wasn’t about to rumble with this guy. If we went hit for hit, I was confident I could take him. But he’d mess me up in the process. Even if I managed to land a perfect knockout punch to his face, the fragile tendons and bones in my hand wouldn’t fare well. No, I had a different tactic in store.
In my peripherals, I could see that there was a power rack with a bar resting on it right behind me.
Always be mindful of your surroundings.
I could hear Liam Neeson saying the iconic words from Batman Begins in my head.
I took a step back. Reaching behind me, I grabbed the metal bar resting on the rack. Leaving the right side of the bar in place, I lifted the left side, brought it over my head, and swung it forward as fast as I could. Before the guy could react, the solid metal end slammed into his face, crunching bones and causing him to spit out a spray of blood as his head whipped sideways. He was lights out in an instant and collapsed to the floor.
A second guy lunged after me. The one wearing shiny sunglasses. I brought the bar back over my head and dropped it on the rack. Gripping tight, I dropped down, swung my body like a gymnast, and kicked him square in the chest with all the force I could muster. The air blew out from his lungs as his body curled and flew backward. He tumbled hard to the floor, then stabilized himself against a bench. Down, dazed, and injured, but not out yet.