by Evan Graver
Whittaker rubbed his chin with his knuckle. “This was not how you expected things to go, was it, Weller?”
“No, sir,” Ryan said, then thought, Murphy, you bastard.
“What do you want to do?” Whittaker asked.
“Have your CSIs look at the sniper hide, and do whatever investigation you need to with Rincone,” Ryan said. “We’d like to get Kirshen back to his family as soon as possible.”
“Can you take him back on your ship?” Whittaker asked.
Scott told them they could, and he radioed for the RIB to bring a body bag and a flag for their fallen comrade. Jinks was the first to get off the RIB. His face was ashen as he squatted beside Kirshen and looked beneath the blanket they had draped over him.
Ryan crouched beside Jinks and put a hand on his friend’s shoulder. Together, they stared at the youthful face frozen forever in time by the sniper’s bullet. Ryan hadn’t known him, but it was still hard to lose a team member on a mission. He had to have been a first-class operator to deploy with the Trident teams, and that made him all right in Ryan’s book.
After a few silent moments, the two men rose and laid out the body bag. They placed Kirshen gently inside and zipped it closed. The men who had come with Jinks helped lift Kirshen onto a stretcher before covering him with the American flag. One of the men was openly weeping at the loss of his friend, and it didn’t help Ryan as he struggled to maintain his decorum.
He scrunched his lips together, fighting back his emotions, and helped lift the litter. They carried the stretcher silently to the water and waded out to the RIB. Ryan’s throat constricted, and tears filled his eyes. No man should have to die for the sins of another, not when they’d won the battle and were on the verge of victory.
As the boat drove away, Ryan stood in the water, a cold ache in his gut and tears on his cheeks. Mrs. Kirshen had lost her baby boy today, and it was all because he had failed to prepare properly for the mission. He hadn’t accounted for the possibility of a rogue sniper, and he would carry the blame for the rest of his life, adding Kirshen’s name to the list of other men he’d lost in combat. Those faces haunted him, as did those of the men he’d killed.
Splashing water onto his face, Ryan smoothed back his hair and wiped away the tears. He could wallow in pity later.
Right now, he had work to do.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Ryan stepped out of the water and returned to the pool deck, careful not to drip water on the crime scene. He called Carmen and told her to join them at Rincone’s house. He wanted her to look at the computers from both properties for a lead as to whoever was paying Rincone’s trust fund.
Oscar stood in the kitchen with Whittaker. Ryan motioned for him to come outside, and the little Venezuelan marched up to him.
“How could you let this happen?” The anger was clear in Oscar’s voice. “How are we going to find the person who killed my men now?” He started cursing in Spanish and smacked the pool’s bar top several times.
Ryan understood why he was upset. He was angry with himself, but he couldn’t change things. “I screwed up.”
Jabbing a finger into Ryan’s chest, Oscar screamed, “You’re right. This is all your fault.”
Ryan took a deep breath and said, “Yeah, it is. I should have secured that house and accounted for the sniper.”
“There’s no use in blaming anyone,” Whittaker said, joining them. “It happens to the best of us. We thought we had a solid plan, and things ended badly.”
The men stood in a triangle, staring at each other. Ryan could feel the righteous indignation seething off Oscar. They had lost their chance to interrogate Rincone and find The Armorer. This entire operation seemed to be one screw-up after another.
They’d been chasing the tail of the snake by messing with these low-level players. Now, it was time to find the head and stamp on it. With that in mind, Ryan decided they wouldn’t make a move until they knew for certain who the head of the operation was.
When Ryan told Oscar his new plan, the Marine wasn’t happy, but he nodded in understanding. Too many men had needlessly lost their lives, thanks to this shadow organization.
The problem now was that the crime scenes were under the RCIPS’s jurisdiction, and they were under no obligation to help Ryan or his team. In fact, the forensics unit had kicked Carmen off Rincone’s computers and packed them away in cardboard cartons to take to headquarters. They’d done the same at the sniper hide.
“Will we get to examine the evidence?” Ryan asked Whittaker.
“I will have to speak to my superiors, but I’m sure we can arrange something,” the superintendent said.
“I need access to those computers,” Ryan said.
“That’s not possible.”
“Why not? You just said you could arrange it.”
“My people will look at them and let you know what they find.”
Ryan looked past Whittaker to Carmen, who had just come out of the bedroom. She’d had at least thirty minutes in there before the forensic teams had arrived. After shrugging, she shook her head and went out the front door.
A sense of hopelessness swept over Ryan. “Come on, Oscar,” he said. “There’s nothing more we can do here. I’ll call you tomorrow, Superintendent.”
The two men walked along the road to their villa. Neither of them said a word until they reached the driveway where Mango was leaning against a gate pillar.
He grinned at Ryan and Oscar. “Evening, gents. Can I see your papers, please?”
Oscar muttered something in Spanish as he brushed past him and went in the house.
Mango and Ryan closed the gate and went around to the pool. Together, they stood staring into the darkness of the sea.
“You can’t blame yourself for this, bro,” Mango said. “We all looked at that house and said it wasn’t a threat.”
“I should have known.”
“You’re not clairvoyant. None of us are. Chalk it up to Murphy’s Law.”
“Kirshen can’t chalk it up to Murphy. He’s dead because I screwed up.”
Mango grabbed Ryan by the shoulders. “Dude, you didn’t screw anything up. This was a clean op from the start. There was no way of knowing there was a sniper in that house. We all said it was good to go. Whatever pity party you’re throwing for yourself is not helping anyone, most of all you.”
Ryan cast off his friend’s hands and backed away, shaking his head. “I can’t do this right now.” He walked down the steps and into the water. His boots and clothes were already soaked from carrying Kirshen to the RIB boat, so he didn’t bother to take them off as he waded chest-deep into the warm water, trying to let it absolve him of his sins.
He heard a splash, and Emily waded up behind him. She slipped her arms around his waist and leaned her head against his back. Clutching her hands, he stared across the sea, which had taken on hues of orange and red from the rising sun. They stood like that for a long time, and when he finally felt her shiver, he turned, lifted her in his arms, and carried her to the steps. Inside, they took a hot shower together and climbed into bed.
Ryan’s troubled thoughts visited him in his dreams. Kirshen’s face floated in the ether with many others, calling to him for help. Help he could no longer give them; help he didn’t think he could give to himself.
Then the dream changed to the recurring one of him being trapped inside a barracks in Iraq with enemy mortar shells raining down outside. A fire burned at his back and a wailing siren called for the EOD team to mount up, but the barracks door wouldn’t open, no matter how hard he tried. When he held up his hands, they were skeletal fingers covered in blood.
His screams woke Emily, and she shook him to bring him back to reality. Ryan felt the shaking in his dream, but he couldn’t stop staring at his hands. Corporal Jimmy Risk walked out of the fire, holding his neck wound, blood seeping out around his fingers. He placed his free hand on Ryan’s shoulder and said, “You can’t save us all.”
The barrack
s door finally opened, and Ryan fell through it into bright sunlight, blinking his eyes and staring up into Emily’s worried face. He sat up and saw the rest of the team, standing in the open bedroom doorway, concern etched on their faces. Hot tears burned down his cheeks, and he couldn’t make them stop. Emily wrapped him in a hug, and Mango pulled the door closed.
When he finally calmed down, he fell back asleep and didn’t dream.
By the time Ryan awoke again, it was late afternoon. He showered and went out to the kitchen, needing a cup of coffee to help clear away the mental cobwebs.
“He lives,” Mango said.
Ryan gave him the middle finger as he waited for the coffee to brew. He poured it straight into a cup and drank it black, like the color of his soul. He swirled the coffee around the cup and understood why his friend Dennis Law, the old captain of the salvage vessel Peggy Lynn, had drank his coffee with a shot of Jim Beam. It took the edge off, and sometimes a man needed to relieve the ache in his chest. Maybe it wasn’t that he didn’t care, but that he cared too much.
Mango sat beside Ryan at the kitchen counter. “We’ve all been there, bro.”
“I don’t need your pity.”
“It’s not pity, Ryan. Every one of us has had nightmares about the shit we’ve done. Oscar relives the night they killed his team. I dream about boarding ships and shoot-outs in steel passageways. Jennifer has seen mangled bodies come into her ER. The one that gets her the most is the guy who wasn’t wearing a helmet while riding his motorcycle. When he wrecked, the pavement ground away half his face.”
Ryan shuddered.
“Yeah, bro, that’s what I’m talking about. We’ve all walked a dark path, even Emily. You should ask her about the drug raid she was on when she was a sheriff’s deputy, or some of the cases she’s worked for the insurance agency. The point is, is that we all suffer from some form of PTSD. We’re all screwed up in the brain, but we can’t take it personally. Kirshen didn’t die because of you. He died because the guy pulling the trigger didn’t care about who he killed to take out his target.”
Emily had once told Ryan about that drug raid, but he didn’t know she dreamed about it. Despite Mango being one of his best friends, it angered Ryan that he had been prying into their private lives. Still sullen, Ryan snapped, “What makes you such an expert?”
Mango propped his prosthetic leg on a stool and pointed to it. “Because I’ve walked through the fire, bro. I’ve been where you are. You gotta surround yourself with good people and find joy in the work you do, otherwise you’ll go crazy. We’re here for you, brother. You don’t have to carry this burden alone.”
Ryan sipped his coffee, then set the mug on the counter. He leaned over it with both palms flat on the granite. Mango was right. He carried a burden that seemed to grow heavier with each mission. He had to find a balance between dealing with his inner turmoil and interacting with the world. One reason he had gravitated to commercial diving was that he didn’t have to deal with people underwater. It was him against the elements, and if he made a wrong decision, the elements won. When he became irritated and combative on land, he was just a grouch who others didn’t want to be around, but the people with him now had seen him at his worst, and they were still there for him.
Slowly, he nodded his head. “Thanks, Mango. I’m glad you’re here, and I’m glad you keep saving my ass, because heaven knows I need it.”
“We all need it at some point, bro. You just seem to need it more than the rest of us. And I’ve got a feeling that I’ll get to do it again real soon.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Using his middle finger to scratch his chin, Ryan smiling at Mango. The two men bumped fists, and Ryan poured another cup of coffee before he went out to the pool where the rest of his friends had congregated.
Emily sat on a chaise lounge beside Jennifer. He stood behind her and ran a hand over her hair before he rested it on her shoulder. She put her hand on his and smiled as she looked over her shoulder at him. He gave her a kiss and whispered, “I love you.”
She kissed his cheek and whispered back, “I know, baby.”
He straightened and squeezed her shoulder, then walked over to Carmen, who was sitting at the patio table, working on her laptop. The sun pounded on him, and he stepped into the shade of the umbrella she’d positioned over her screen.
Looking up with concern, she asked, “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’ll be fine. Did you get anything from Rincone’s computer last night?”
She stared intently at the screen as her fingers danced across the keyboard. “No, but I had a feeling the police would take it, so I installed a backdoor. The police just booted it up. I’m accessing it right now.”
Ryan smiled. Carmen was resourceful and hot. He appreciated her ingenuity. “When we raided the lawyer’s office in Panama, Oscar took a bunch of files besides the one on The Armorer. Do you think there might be something useful in them?” he asked.
She shrugged. “Anything could help. Can you send them over to Barry?”
“Yeah. We scanned them before I sent the originals to my DHS contact.”
Carmen looked up at him. “Why would you send them to DHS?”
“Because I work with them, and if they help take a few bad guys off the street, it was worth it.”
She shook her head. “Don’t be naïve, Ryan. There are two sets of laws in the world: one for the rich and powerful, and the other to keep the rest of us in line.”
“Yeah, I know all about how the government works.” He smiled. “Let me know if you find anything.”
“I will.”
Ryan doubted there was anything related to The Armorer in the files they’d swiped from Panama or he’d have sent them to Barry already, but they couldn’t discount anything. Maybe they would help Barry flesh out the network map? He retrieved his computer and emailed the files to the hacker in St. Thomas, then called him to let him know what he would find in his inbox. They discussed how he should proceed, and, as always, Barry told him it would be expensive.
Ryan had just hung up the phone when Carmen called him back to the table. He and Mango walked over to see what she had found.
She turned the computer so the two men could see the screen as they sat beside her. “So, Rincone was getting payments from the trust that Valdez set up,” she said. “There was also a significant cash infusion about two years ago. According to the records filed at the bank, Rincone claimed it was from the brokered sale of his yacht, and he had a receipt for ten million dollars. The bank tagged the records with a file that included the change in the yacht’s title. But that’s not the interesting part. The company who owned the boat before Rincone purchased it was Octavius International, and the signatory for both Octavius and the corporation Rincone set up for the yacht is a man named Marcus Syme.”
“Is he our next target?” Mango asked.
“I don’t want to go after any more low-level players,” Ryan said. “We do the research and go for the king.”
“You don’t have to worry about Syme, anyway,” Carmen said. “He’s already in prison. The real story here is that I traced back the transactions for this yacht from Octavius to the Seychelles, then to the bank in Zurich that received the money from the account in Crimea.”
“Do we know where that money came from yet?” Ryan asked.
“That, I don’t know. I sent my network map to Barry, and he’s integrating it into what we already have and running search algorithms on the files you sent him.”
“Once again, we wait,” Ryan lamented.
“Usually when we find a thread, it doesn’t take long for the whole thing to unravel,” Carmen said reassuringly.
“What about the sniper?” Mango asked.
Ryan leaned back in his chair, looking around at the rest of the team who had joined them at the table. “My guess is that someone was paying him to watch Rincone and take him out if he got picked up.”
“How was Rincone’s security being paid?” Oscar
asked.
“The police took another computer from the sniper’s house, but I don’t have access to it,” Carmen said.
“Whoever the shooter was, he was probably just a paid hitman,” Emily said. “The only reason for us to go after him is to find out who paid him, or if you just want revenge.”
“Who would want Rincone dead?” Ryan asked. “These are the options, as I see them.” He held up his index finger. “The Armorer.” He raised another finger. “And the Venezuelans, because he disappeared on them.” Scrutinizing Oscar, he raised a third finger. “Unless you already know who The Armorer is, and you’re working us to help take out his network.”
Mango leaned toward the Venezuelan. “Tell me who The Armorer is so I can kick your ass.”
Oscar held up his hands, palms out, and backed away from Mango. “I don’t know who he is. Why I would I have Rincone killed? His death has put us back to square one.”
“Revenge,” Emily said.
“Yes, I want revenge,” Oscar confessed, “but I didn’t hire an assassin to kill Rincone.”
Ryan cleared his throat. “Well, buddy, it’s starting to look like you’re on a rampage. First, you killed Valdez in Panama, and now Rincone is dead.”
“I didn’t do it.”
“You’re looking pretty guilty, bro,” Mango added.
“I’m telling you, I had nothing to do with it.” Oscar backed farther away from the table.
“Give me your phone,” Ryan said, and Oscar handed it to him, then stalked into the house.
“Carmen,” Ryan said, “I want you to go through his search history and his call log.”
Carmen hooked the phone to her computer and began working on her keyboard.
“What are we going to do with him?” Mango asked.
“He gets the benefit of the doubt, for now,” Ryan said. “In the meantime, I want to get into the sniper’s house and look at the hide again.”