Killers and Keepers

by Charles Dougherty

  "I'm leery of continuing to correspond with him. You know the limitations Finn and I are working with as far as communications. We're looking at getting farther away from civilization for a while, so that's only going to get worse. My question is whether you would be willing to impersonate me and try to draw him out? You've got more options for hiding online than we do."

  "Hmm. We could do that. We could also feed him bogus metadata and confuse him as far as location is concerned. I'm guessing that's one of your worries."

  "Yes," Mary said. "You must have a pretty good idea of how the negotiations worked going through the broker, since that's how Phorcys started working with me before we went direct. For a start, you could pretend to think the broker's still the one you're dealing with."

  "Okay. But all I can do is either accept or reject the offer, right?"

  "Yes, if you were really still working with the broker. But our hacker may not know that. He's already changed the offer price. That's one thing the broker would never have done, so he doesn't appear to be all that familiar with her protocol. I would suggest you challenge him on that."

  "Challenge him how?"

  "Tell him his flaky behavior is making you uncomfortable with this deal. Ask why he thought it was necessary to up the ante. Say that makes you suspicious that there's something out of the ordinary about the target. Tell him that unless he can explain that to your satisfaction, you'll reject his offer."

  "Okay. That's an invitation for him to disclose a little more info on the target. I need the background on how this would work in the absence of a hacker. When I was dealing with the broker on Phorcys's behalf earlier, things were straightforward. Help me understand how she would react to what you're proposing, if she were still in the loop instead of the hacker."

  "She would tell me to take it or leave it. If I took it and didn't like the target, I could make a counteroffer, within reason, and she would mediate between me and the client. I never tried that, but that's how it was supposed to work."

  "What if you couldn't strike a deal?"

  "Her position was that if everybody was operating in good faith, that wouldn't happen. If it did happen, she implied that she would terminate her relationship with one or both of the parties."

  "Terminate, huh? Does that mean what I think it does?"

  "Probably, but I can't confirm that."

  "And what would happen to the proposed target in a situation like that?"

  "Good question. That might depend on the target, and what she thought of the two parties who couldn't agree."

  "She's a dangerous woman," Aaron said. "That would make for tense negotiations."

  "It's a dangerous business."

  "Are you going to tell her that I'm standing in for you?"

  "No. I don't think she would like that, and I can't see any reason to tell her. She's not going to know about it, since she didn't encourage me to continue the dialog with him. We'd be better off leaving her out of this. Do you disagree? Either of you?"

  "No," Aaron said. "It's your call."

  "Whatever you think," I said. "You're the one who's worked with her."

  "Okay," Aaron said. "I'll give it a try, but I'll need the password."

  "Sure. Ready?"

  "Yes."

  Mary rattled off the password, and Aaron read it back to her.

  "I'll see what his latest message is and take it from there," Aaron said. "You can still use your satellite hotspot to check our blind drop, right?"

  "Yes," Mary said. "I just didn't want to use it to log into the one the hacker's using."

  "Makes sense. I'll use ours to keep you posted if I can't reach you on the burner phone. Ready to talk about Michael Kent?"

  "Yes. What did you learn?"

  "Well, he's not just some local drug dealer down in the islands. He's been around a while, and he's big enough so Interpol and the DEA both have files on him. He's well insulated, though, and he's generous to the politicians in St. Vincent. In his forties, from an old, old, British colonial family.

  "He's still growing sugarcane on the old family plantation and turning it into rum. Supposed to be good stuff, and it's a profitable business, but it's believed to be a cover for growing marijuana. The rum business is also good for laundering drug money. He runs a diversified drug business, too. He's not just into grass; he does it all. He's tight with one of the cartels, so he moves their coke and heroin, plus who knows what else.

  "The DEA claims he's the source of a lot of the drugs coming into east coast ports, and Interpol's files indicate he's shipping product into Europe through the French islands. That means he's tight with the Unione Corse too, like Travis."

  "Another big-time operator, then," I said. "Glad we didn't do anything to get on the wrong side of him."

  "No kidding," Aaron said, laughing. "But here's another interesting tidbit. He was a major source of product for your old pal O'Hanlon, Mary."

  "Really?"

  "Yes, really. We checked through those files you liberated from O'Hanlon's bagman. Kent was featured prominently in them. We would have gotten around to him eventually, I imagine, even without your stumbling across him. Interesting that this Travis character snatched his daughter. I'm curious to check up on Travis. He's either brave or foolhardy, tangling with a guy like Kent."

  "Or maybe he thinks he's evenly matched," I said. "Remember, it looks like Travis is working in the Unione Corse's territory too. He's got some stroke, or he'd be dead. Those people don't mess around."

  "Good point. You two have anything else?"

  I looked at Mary and raised my eyebrows. She shook her head.

  "No, that's it from our end," I said.

  "I'll call you when I have something," Aaron said, dropping the call.

  After we talked to Aaron, Mary took the phone from my hand. She stood up and put her hands behind the small of her back, stretching. "Should I go below and put together something for lunch?"

  "Okay," I said. "But before you do that, let's figure out where we're going."

  "You still feeling anxious about Dominica?"

  "Yes. Even more so, now. Travis isn't likely to give up easily. Not after all we've cost him."

  "We're on the same wavelength. I've been thinking about that. We need to deal with him."

  "Deal with him? What do you have in mind?"

  "You know me. I like a direct approach. We should go to St. Lucia."

  "You serious? That's his turf; he'll have the home court advantage."

  Mary grinned. "That'll make him cocky. He won't be expecting us. He doesn't even know that we know who he is."

  "He might suspect, at this point. He's lost five people; he'll assume we questioned at least some of them."

  "Maybe. But he still won't think we would come after him. I'll guarantee he's never run across anybody like us, either. He has no idea what he's up against."

  "You're saying we should just waltz into his nightclub and blow him away?"

  "Pretty much, yes." Mary tilted her head, her brow wrinkling. "You don't agree?"

  "I've never done anything like that. Not on my own account."

  "What are you talking about, Finn? You've killed at least a dozen people in cold blood just since I've known you, and you've been in this business a long time. You have a ton of kills to your credit."

  "This is different. I didn't just decide to go kill those people on my own. It was always the endpoint of a process."

  Mary shook her head. "That doesn't make any sense. These three we just dumped weren't the endpoint of any process that I know about."

  "They attacked us. There was no other choice."

  "What about Senator Lee, or those men in the Bahamas? They were blindsided. They weren't coming after us, and you killed them without a second thought."

  "Lee had my daughter kidnapped."

  "But she was home free before you wasted him. What about the Bahamas? Those guys didn't know you from Adam."

  "They were trying to manipulate our elections
to benefit a foreign power, and there was a consensus that eliminating them was the right thing to do."

  "A consensus? You mean you were comfortable killing them because Mike and Bob said it was okay?"

  "There's more to it than that, but yes. I'm having trouble with the idea that you and I are talking about killing this man in St. Lucia that we've never even heard of before. You're setting us up as judge, jury, and executioners."

  "He buys and sells people, Finn. People like me, or your daughter. He turns them into sex slaves. That's not enough for you?"

  "We only have the word of that one guy we questioned. He could have been lying about Travis, for all we know."

  "I can't believe this. You're wimping out on me. That piece of shit deserves to die, and you know it. You just don't want to make the decision; you'd rather somebody in an office somewhere told you it was okay to kill him. Is that it?"

  "You're twisting the facts, Mary."

  "I'm twisting the facts? Bullshit! You sound like a gutless, bureaucratic weasel."

  "And you sound like a homicidal maniac. Remind me not to look at you cross-eyed."

  "I resent that. You know me, Finn. I'm no hot-headed killer."

  I bit my tongue at that, remembering the three times I knew about when she lost her temper and took matters into her own hands. She killed over twenty people in anger during a few weeks. And that was just recently. I could only guess about her track record before I knew her.

  When I didn't respond to her last statement soon enough to suit her, she stood up, glaring at me. "To hell with lunch. I'm not hungry; if you are, get it yourself. I'm going to take a shower and sack out for a while. You spend your watch thinking about whether you want to run with the big dogs or stay on the porch. You can let me know when I relieve you in four hours." And she left me at the helm.

  I reflected on the ease with which Mary killed. A few months ago on O'Hanlon's megayacht in Martinique, she slaughtered everybody aboard. The fact that O'Hanlon ordered her kidnapping and had her brought to the yacht might excuse her killing him and the men who snatched her. I wasn't sure the rest of the crew deserved to die.

  Then there was Miami, where she got distracted in the middle of one of our missions and disappeared. She came back into the fold after she killed a pimp who was an undercover source for the feds, along with his three federally provided bodyguards. She blamed him for her mother's death a decade earlier, and when she saw him, she dropped everything and went after him.

  A few weeks ago, we were on a mission in Charleston, South Carolina. Things went wrong. We were trying to regroup when she disappeared after carrying out another massacre. That time, she left a dozen dead on another megayacht.

  Yes, they were bad people. The yacht belonged to the crook we were after, and some of the crew tried to capture Mary earlier that day. Still, what Mary did was hard to justify. Even she had a tough time with it. After that Charleston escapade, she spent several weeks in intensive therapy, recovering from her guilt.

  And now she wanted to take matters into her own hands again and kill the man running what appeared to be a well-organized human trafficking operation. If the man we questioned could be believed, Randall Travis was a bad hombre. Somebody was after us, all right; it could be Randall Travis, but we only had one man's word for that.

  I was comfortable doing away with someone who was an imminent threat to us, but I wasn't ready to kill Travis until we knew more about him. He might not be the head of the organization, or even part of it. I wasn't willing to pick off people one at a time until we got the right one.

  Aside from the question of his guilt, killing a few thugs in international waters in self-defense and sinking their bodies in deep water was one thing. Attacking someone like Travis at his home base was something else. If he really ran a multinational human trafficking operation, he wouldn't be an easy mark.

  We wouldn't be able to stage-manage the scene of the crime if we wiped out a nest of crooks in a nightclub in the capital city of St. Lucia. Leaving a trail of bodies through the islands was a bad idea under any circumstances. Doing it when we were supposed to be lying low to let the dust settle from our recent exploits was an even worse idea.

  How could I rein in Mary's impulse without losing her? Losing her had both personal and professional ramifications. From a professional perspective, we were both part of Phorcys — an organization that I believed to be worthwhile. They put us together and sent us out as a team to right some heinous wrongs. We each had our own strong ties to the founders of Phorcys, as well.

  And then there was our personal relationship. It might be rocky at the moment, but I love Mary, and she's given ample evidence that she feels the same way about me. This isn't the first time we've had a major disagreement, but this could be the most serious one yet.

  Mary and I came to our shared profession by different paths. I got here by way of the military; I learned to kill on behalf of my country. My shift from working for the Department of Defense to working for Phorcys wasn't the result of a change in my ultimate loyalties. Rather, it reflected my disgust with the blatant corruption of our government. I was loyal to my oath to uphold the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic, but I refused to take orders from crooks, especially if they were the elected leaders of my country.

  Mary learned our trade the hard way, as a result of personal misfortune. Somewhere, despite her wayward childhood and adolescence, she acquired a solid grasp of the difference in right and wrong. However, that didn't always moderate her hair-trigger temper. A victim of childhood sexual abuse, she was quick to judge people who exploited those who couldn't defend themselves.

  The difference in her assessments of the two girls we rescued revealed an aspect of her that was new to me. In my eyes, both girls were victims. Mary's view was that Margie, the one from a privileged background, deserved what happened to her. It wasn't hard to see why Mary identified with Lucinda, but I was puzzled by her reaction to Margie.

  I stopped myself; that was a question I couldn't answer, and it wasn't relevant to our immediate problem. Mary was in full-on attack mode, and my judgment was that we should hold off on confronting Travis, at least until we were sure of his role. In a few hours, Mary would come on watch and we would have to decide on our next destination.

  My choice would be to avoid places where we might be recognized. Mary's wishes aside, we were under siege from three different directions. The little group in the Department of Defense that used to employ me wanted me dead. Some unknown person was attempting to engage Mary, for reasons that we couldn't grasp. None of the explanations for that were good, though. And now an international human trafficking ring was on our trail.

  The only positive aspect of our situation was that we didn't have an assigned mission from Phorcys, other than to stay out of sight until they needed us. Our only goal at the moment was survival.

  I was still wondering how to deal with Mary when I heard the burner phone ringing below deck. I locked the helm and was halfway down the companionway ladder when I saw Mary roll to a sitting position on the starboard settee where she was snoozing. Glancing at me, she grabbed the phone from the shelf above the settee and looked at the screen. Handing it to me, she said, "Aaron."

  I saw the time on the screen as I answered, surprised that he was calling back so soon. "Good afternoon."

  "Same to you. Didn't know if you'd have service, but I thought I'd try. Where are you, anyway?"

  "Sailing down the eastern shore of southern Basse Terre. I just turned the corner into the Canal des Saintes. What's new?"

  "Mary there?"

  "I am. Hi, Aaron."

  "Hi. I hit pay dirt on your boy Travis. You're not gonna believe this, though."

  "Tell us," I said.

  "You've stumbled into a real mess. Travis runs a big international human trafficking operation out of St. Lucia, all right. He's on everybody's radar screen, but he's shrewd enough so nothing has stuck to him so far. And his boss has the fix in, al
l over the place."

  "Who's his boss?" Mary asked.

  "Michael Kent."

  16

  "Michael Kent?" Mary asked, rubbing her eyes. "But that doesn't make sense."

  "You mean because the girl claimed to be Kent's daughter?" Aaron asked.

  "Yes. Are you saying she's not?"

  "No, I'm not saying that. I don't know anything about her — yet — or even whether Kent has a daughter. She could be his daughter, or she could have been lying. We haven't gotten that far into Kent's personal background, but we're working on it."

  "Why would Travis's people snatch his boss's daughter?" Mary asked.

  "I don't have an answer for that. It's only been four hours since you gave me Travis's name; I've still got people working on it. If you want speculation, I can come up with all kinds of ideas. Give me a little more time, and maybe we'll turn up some facts."

  Mary was frowning and chewing on her lower lip. When she didn't say anything for a few seconds, I spoke up. "Sounds like we should sit tight until we know more about what's going on."

  "Yeah, but be careful. Travis is gunning for you two, still. Or maybe it's Kent. It's hard to know. I've made this our top priority. We should have more information in a day or two."

  "Wait," Mary said. "Why would Kent be gunning for us? We saved his daughter."

  "If she's his daughter," Aaron said. "Right now, all we know for sure is that you two poked a hornets' nest. With people like Kent and Travis, there's no telling what's happening. They could be in the midst of a power struggle, or the girl could have been spinning a yarn."

  "Why would she do that?"

  "Who knows, Mary? If you want my advice, stay as far away from that whole mess as you can. It has nothing to do with us."

  "Except Travis is trying to kill us."

  "That's why you should keep your heads down until we figure out what's what. It might be Kent who's trying to kill you. Where are you headed now?"