by Evan Graver
Ryan’s next phone call was to Floyd Landis.
The DHS agent answered with a growl. “To what do I owe this honor?”
Ryan said, “General Esteban Rincone.”
There was silence on the line, except for Landis clicking his pen in and out, a habit he had when he was thinking. The old agent probably had on his usual wrinkled suit with his feet up on his desk. Ryan knew the agent’s steely blue eyes had a military hardness about them that matched his flattop haircut. He’d been on the receiving end of more than a few of the old Army Ranger’s hard stares.
“Hello?” Ryan said.
“What do you know about Rincone?” Landis responded.
“He disappeared from Venezuela about five years ago. No one has seen him since the U.S. government indicted him for drug trafficking and bribery. The Venezuelans want him back, and the U.S. wants him to stand trial for his crimes. The State Department has issued a one-million-dollar bounty for him.”
“So, why are you calling me about him?” Landis asked.
Ryan smiled. “Do I get to collect the bounty for finding him?”
“Are you telling me you know where he is, Ryan?”
“Yes. Do you want his address?”
“Why are you being so forthcoming, Weller? That’s not like you.”
“Because I’m going to snatch him, and I want to hand him to you when we get him back to the States.”
“You get him, and I’ll have a rendition team ready.”
Ryan told the DHS agent his plan.
“Gitmo sounds like an excellent home for him,” Landis said. “Plus, you’re close to there.”
“Sounds good. While Jinks is bringing a ship, can you send an agency plane to stand by at the George Town airport in case we need a fallback plan?”
“Yeah, just tell me when.”
“Thanks. Can I ask one more favor?” Ryan asked.
Landis sighed, then said, “Name it.”
“I’d like to have a Cayman Islands cop with the assault team. Just to make things kosher.”
“I’ll make a few calls. Can I have him call you on this number?”
“Yes. Thanks, Landis.”
Before Ryan could hang up, Landis said, “The marshals put the Langstons in Witness Protection and they turned their documents over to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.”
“That’s great news,” Ryan said. “Thanks for getting them in.”
“I’d add it to the list of favors that you owe me, but the papers should prove to be an intelligence boon.”
Ryan chuckled. “Well, I’ll owe you for helping with this one.”
“Just bring Rincone in. That will be thanks enough.”
Ryan ended the call and walked into the house. Carmen was on her computer, with Oscar hovering close by. Despite her obvious relationship with Barry, Oscar still had the hots for her.
Emily had a set of drone controls strapped to her torso and was using the joystick to maneuver it as she and Jennifer watched the screen.
After grabbing a bottle of water from the fridge, Ryan crowded in beside Emily and Jennifer to see an overhead view of Rincone’s property. The man he’d spoken to was still on the pool deck, plus there was another guard near the front gate.
“Fly over that abandoned house beside Rincone’s,” Ryan said.
Emily manipulated the joystick and flew the quadcopter over the house he’d seen from the seawall. There was a low stone wall surrounding the property on three sides and a high white wooden gate across the entrance to the drive, which was just a sandy path leading to the house. The tiny structure with its shingled roof and tan stucco walls sat next to an empty lot that separated it from Rincone’s place. Thick stands of mangroves and bushes heavy with yellow flowers grew in the lot, making sneaking through them a challenge. The rest of the abandoned house’s yard was open, leaving little cover for either the assault team or Rincone’s guards.
They spotted Mango walking along the road, scouting locations for his sniper hide. Ryan knew suitable spots were in short supply from his own reconnaissance of the area via satellite maps and his quick swim along the coast.
Ryan laughed as Emily buzzed Mango with the drone. He ducked, then ran after the quadcopter, swatting at it like it was a mosquito before using both hands to flip off the camera. Emily wiggled the drone back and forth, then raced it back to their house.
Mango again gave them the finger when he came in the door, then gave them his recon report. The only good perch was in a house two hundred yards to the west of Rincone’s, and he didn’t think the owners would let him post up there while they slept tight in their beds. Even if he could gain access, there was no guarantee he could cover the team effectively because of all the vegetation growing between the houses.
“We’ll just have to do without,” Ryan decided.
“When we take him offshore, what will be waiting for us?” Mango asked.
“I’m not sure yet,” Ryan said. “Jinks is making those arrangements.”
“If it’s big enough, I could use it as a gun platform.”
“Possibly,” Ryan agreed. “We’ll know more when Jinks calls back.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
While Jinks was preparing to deploy his team from Texas City, Ryan had Carmen look up the property records of the houses surrounding Rincone’s. They were all held in trusts or shell corporations. She tracked several of them to their actual owners, who lived in either the States or Europe, and the owners used local real estate companies to rent the properties when not using them. The one she had the most trouble with was the house Mango had identified as the best shooting perch.
After a day of searching records, including real estate sales, property taxes, and tracing shell corporations, Carmen could find nothing concrete about the owners. Using drone and foot surveillance of the area, they decided from the activity and the accumulation of things around the house that the owners lived there, and they turned to other matters. Something nagged Ryan about it, but he couldn’t put his finger on the problem. Maybe it was the lack of transparency or just the amount of obfuscation that people went through to hide who they were.
While Emily was making another pass over the house with the drone, a car pulled into the driveway of their own villa, and a man got out. Even though he wasn’t in uniform, everything, from his movements to his bearing, screamed ‘police’ to Ryan. He was of average height with a thick build, a round tan face, and close-cropped hair.
“That must be Whittaker,” Ryan said. The two men had spoken briefly on the phone, and Ryan had given him the address for the rental house.
When Ryan answered the door, the man flashed a badge and introduced himself as Acting Superintendent Todd Whittaker.
They shook hands and Ryan invited him inside. “Thanks for coming, Superintendent.”
Whittaker’s voice was low and gravelly. “I’m here because my superior asked me to cooperate.”
Ryan took him to the pool patio table, where they took seats under the umbrella with Emily and Jennifer. He showed Whittaker a photograph of Rincone and explained that they were there to extradite the general.
Whittaker looked through the sliding glass door at their computers and drone equipment. “You’re not U.S. military or members of their law enforcement agencies. Are you bounty hunters?”
“We are contract employees of Homeland Security.”
“This is highly unusual, to say the least, but my superior got a call, and here I am. So, how can I assist you?”
“I would like to bring a team from offshore, take the house, and send them and Rincone back to the ship,” explained Ryan.
Whittaker nodded. “And you would like my help with what?”
“First, I can’t bring weapons into your country without it being a felony, so I need your approval. Second, I need your cooperation to cordon off the roads. If something goes wrong, we don’t want Rincone and his men to escape.”
“I see.”
“Rincone is a slippery dev
il, Superintendent,” Ryan said. “The third thing I ask of you is to involve as few people as possible in this.”
“Are you suggesting the Royal Cayman Islands Police Service is corrupt?” Whittaker asked.
“Everyone has a price, and Rincone has the money to pay it. I’m sure he has a couple of RCIPS men in his pocket.”
Whittaker looked thoughtful as he rubbed his chin with the knuckle of his index finger.
“Getting Rincone off your island is in your best interest,” Emily said. “If he’s paying your men, you want that to stop.”
“Yes, I do,” Whittaker conceded. “I will mobilize the Specialist Operations department to assist you.”
“What assets do you have?” Ryan asked.
“I will deploy two squads of the Firearms Response Unit to block the road and have the Marine and Air Operations units standing by. How soon will this take place? I will need time to gather my people.”
“Let me make a phone call and I can give you an exact time frame.”
“Please do,” Whittaker said.
Ryan retrieved his phone and stepped inside to talk to Jinks. When the retired SEAL came on the line, Ryan asked him how long it would be before he and his team arrived in Grand Cayman.
“We’re leaving Texas City right now,” Jinks said. “The captain says twenty-eight hours at cruising speed; twenty-four if he can push forty knots all the way. We’ll need to refuel once we get there.”
“What the hell are you riding on that makes forty knots?”
“She’s a fifty-seven-meter catamaran work vessel. Normally, she delivers workers to oil rigs, but I commandeered her for this trip. I’ve got two twenty-foot RIB boats on the aft deck and a cargo container to house your prisoner.”
Ryan stepped to the door and motioned for Whittaker to join him. When the Superintendent arrived, Ryan asked him, “Can you make expedited arrangements to fuel the ship at the Port of George Town?”
“I will have to make some calls, but yes, we should be able to do that.”
Into the phone, Ryan said, “Head for the port, and I’ll meet you there.”
“Roger that,” Jinks said. “I’ll call you when we’re close.”
The call ended, and Ryan turned to Whittaker. “They’ll be here between twenty-four and thirty hours, depending on weather and speed.”
Whittaker nodded. “I want to go over your plan one more time, so I know where everyone will be.”
They went to the kitchen, where Ryan spread a map of the island across the table. He pointed to locations where he thought the roadblocks would be most effective, and Whittaker asked about evacuating the surrounding homes. Ryan vetoed the idea; he didn’t want to alert Rincone that anything was out of the ordinary, and the risk to innocents was minimal. With them hitting the house in the dead of the night, everyone should be at home, sleeping. But all the same, he was thankful Rincone had picked one of the more secluded spots on the island and not a high-rise penthouse in the heart of George Town.
After discussing some finer points of the plan, Whittaker left, promising to have everything ready in less than thirty hours.
Ryan walked down to the water and stood with his hands in his pockets. The ocean looked like a giant lake, stretching to the horizon, and he prayed the weather held for their operation. He went over the plan again in his head, working on details and trying to cover all the possibilities. He believed the plan was solid, but he also knew that Mr. Murphy had a habit of wrecking the best laid plans.
And on a night operation, Murphy always made an appearance.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Dark Water Research’s catamaran workboat, Amarillo, arrived in George Town twenty-seven hours after Ryan and Jinks had spoken over the phone. Ryan, Oscar, and Mango met the vessel at the port and stood with Jinks, watching the fueling operation, until Acting Superintendent Todd Whittaker arrived.
In the cabin on Amarillo’s main deck, they met with the twelve other members of the Trident rendition team. Ryan knew some of them from previous missions. He shook hands with Scott Gregory and Aston Dent, a tall African American who had served with Jinks in SEAL Team Six. Even in his black battle dress uniform, or BDUs, he looked dapper. He would lead the landing party while Scott would go in with Oscar on the road team.
Jinks had pinned a map to a bulkhead, and they used it to decide on the placement of Whittaker’s forces. With the plans complete, Whittaker departed, and the Amarillo pulled away from the dock.
The captain rounded the northwestern tip of Grand Cayman and stood the Amarillo fourteen miles out to sea, beyond the island’s maritime limits, while the team prepared for their op. Once they’d performed final weapons checks and ensured their loadouts were ready, they relaxed for the next six hours. They would launch the raid at four in the morning when the guards would be sleepy and ready for their shift to end.
At three-thirty, the Amarillo’s captain moved her to within a quarter mile of the shore. The men unloaded the two RIB boats and raced toward Grand Cayman. Green Team, the land force, headed for Ryan’s villa. They passed over communications earpieces to Emily, Jennifer, and Carmen so they could keep track of the action as it unfolded.
Ryan and Aston positioned their Blue Team boat just offshore and watched the Rincone residence through binoculars. Ryan radioed Mango, who was in position on the roof of the Amarillo’s bridge with an Accuracy International AT sniper rifle chambered in .338 Lapua. “RoboCop, do you see the guard by the pool?”
“I’ve got him,” Mango replied.
“When I signal, take him out.”
“Copy that.”
Blue Team waited in the shifting RIB boat as Scott’s Green Team moved up the road toward Rincone’s.
Once they were in place near the gate, Scott radioed, “Green Team set.”
“Copy,” Ryan replied. “Hold one.” He ordered the RIB driver to put the nose of the boat against the steps to Rincone’s pool. Just before it touched, he said into the radio, “Now, RoboCop. Now, Green Team.”
Mango fired, and his target folded over as the bullet struck him square in the chest. At the same time, Green Team cut the chain on the driveway gate and pushed it open. As Scott spun into the front yard, he shot the guard there with a three-round burst from his suppressed Heckler and Koch MP5.
“Green Team ready to breach,” he radioed as his men stacked up behind him in a gun train at the house’s front door.
Ryan, Aston, and the rest of their team ran up the steps, fanning out to cover the surrounding yard.
“Breach now,” Ryan said.
Simultaneously, Scott and Aston blew the front and rear doors open with demolition charges. The two teams swept through the house with their bright tactical lights blazing on the foregrips of their MP5s. With quick efficiency, they dispatched the remaining guards and entered Rincone’s bedroom.
They found Rincone in bed, disoriented from the noise and the light.
Oscar pushed his way into the room and nodded to Ryan. “That’s him.”
Scott and Ryan dragged the former Venezuelan Army general out of bed and secured his hands behind his back with flex cuffs. With a cordon of men spread out to guard the grounds, Ryan, Aston, and Oscar followed behind two of the team members as they marched Rincone outside and across the pool deck.
Just as they reached the stairs to the waiting boat, Rincone’s head snapped to the side, and brains, blood, and bone erupted from his skull. The bullet that plowed through his head struck Bill Kirshen, the Trident operator on the other side of him, and both collapsed to the ground.
“Shooter!” everyone screamed.
“Where? Where the hell did that come from?” Scott yelled.
“He’s in the house to the west,” Mango replied. “The one I said would make a good hide.”
“Shit!” Ryan screamed. “Green Team: get down there, now. Blue Team: rally to the boat.”
A chorus of acknowledgments came across the net.
Aston ordered two men to stay with Ki
rshen while Blue Team climbed aboard their RIB and raced toward the house where the sniper had taken his shot from.
“What’s going on?” Whittaker asked over the communications set.
“A sniper just shot Rincone,” Ryan said. “We’re going after him.”
“We’ll converge on the house,” Whittaker said.
“No,” Ryan yelled. “Stay at your post. I say again, stay at your post. Watch for anyone trying to leave the area.”
“Copy,” Whittaker replied.
The RIB driver ran the boat to the steps carved from the island’s native rock and the team charged up them, spreading out on the rear lawn of the sniper’s home.
An explosion came from the front of the house, and Ryan heard Scott order members of Green Team to guard the front gate before transmitting, “Green stacked and racked.”
“Roger. Blue Team breaching from the rear.”
Twin explosions rocked the house as the breaching charges shattered doorknobs and blew out ornamental glass. Both teams spilled in, laser beams flashing through the smoke left by the explosives in full repeat of the operation that had just taken place two hundred yards down the road.
“Scott, take the wing to your left,” Ryan ordered as he spun toward the hallway on his left.
The teams cleared the house, but it was empty. The only sign that the sniper had been there was a shooting bench inside the upper room with a Blaser R93 rifle resting on it.
“Don’t touch anything,” Ryan ordered. “Everyone fall back to the boats. Whittaker, we need your forensics team in here.”
They turned the sniper’s hide over to the RCIPS, and Ryan, Mango, and Oscar gave all their assault gear but their handguns to the Trident team as they returned to the Amarillo. The three men walked with Scott Gregory to Rincone’s house. They found Whittaker’s Firearms Response Unit had taken up positions around the property, and Whittaker himself stood on the pool deck, looking at the dead bodies of Rincone and Bill Kirshen, who had bled out despite the best efforts of his comrades to provide medical assistance.