by Evan Graver
At the prison, the cops separated them by gender and took them to different buildings. Ryan sat on the narrow wooden bench beside Oscar and Mango. He looked at the grim faces of the other two men and figured he looked the same. He had no desire to look at the world from behind bars again. He had to figure a way out of this.
Whittaker motioned for Ryan to come over to the desk.
“What’re the charges?” Ryan asked.
“Possession of a firearm and multiple knives, aiding and abetting a fugitive, and murder.”
Ryan gulped. His body seemed to freeze at the last charge. Murder? He hadn’t killed anyone. When he found his voice again, he asked, “Who’d I kill?”
“A man named Billy Ron Sorenson.”
Ryan’s body shook with a chill. He had left Venezuela and the grizzly struggle with the serial killer behind him. Like a specter from the past, it was now back to haunt him.
“Who?” he managed to say, his throat constricting around the word as he thought about going back to the nightmare that was the prison on Margarita Island.
“Interpol has issued Red Notices for both you and Oscar López.”
“What about everyone else?”
“They’re facing firearms charges.”
“Even the girls?”
Whittaker nodded.
“Come on, man. We worked together on the Rincone operation. You know I’m connected to Homeland Security. Why would I have a Red Notice for killing someone?”
“By law, I have to detain you for extradition.”
“Are you really going to send us to Venezuela?”
“Yes.” Whittaker stood and walked into another office.
“What about my phone call?” Ryan shouted.
Chapter Thirty-Six
The Cayman Islands prison guards came for Ryan in the middle of the night. They shackled his hands and feet and led him to an interrogation room. He hadn’t been to sleep yet, and he was both tired and wired. The adrenaline had shot through him as soon as the guards had called his name. Now, he rubbed his eyes and forced himself to focus. The midnight interrogation technique wasn’t new to him, and he tried to clear his mind of doubts and clutter. It wasn’t easy on account of the guards leaving him in a warm, quiet room, and before long, his head drooped, and his eyes fluttered shut.
It was then that the interrogation room’s door slammed open, startling Ryan back to reality. His heart hammered in his chest. When Acting Superintendent Todd Whittaker walked in, Ryan breathed a sigh of relief and opened his mouth to protest his innocence. The superintendent cut him off with a wave of his hand and sat down across from Ryan. He placed a cup of coffee and a file folder on the table and opened the folder.
Whittaker explained that possessing an unlicensed firearm in the Grand Caymans carried a seven-year sentence if he pled guilty. If the court convicted him and his friends, their punishment would be ten years in prison. Ryan didn’t want his friends to serve any amount of time.
“You allowed us to carry those firearms for our protection,” he protested.
“I made no such declaration,” Whittaker said. “As a matter of fact, I’m thinking of charging you with the murder of Esteban Rincone.”
“I’d like my phone call,” Ryan said.
Whittaker closed the file and clasped his hands in front of him on the table. “Here’s the deal. I’m going to put you in a cell with a friend of yours, Randall Grasz. You talk to him, and ring for me in the morning.” With that, the superintendent stood and left the room with his folder and coffee.
Ryan leaned back in his chair. Had this all been a ploy for Whittaker to put him in the cell with the sniper? He didn’t have long to ponder the question, because the guards came in and escorted him to Grasz’s cell. As he waited for the guards to unlock his shackles and open the cell door, he looked through the bars at the man stretched out on the bunk. He was short and wiry, with shaggy brown hair. There was nothing distinguishable about him; a true gray man who could blend into the shadows, except facial recog had taken away the shadows.
The guard pushed Ryan into the cell, and Grasz looked over at him before returning his gaze to the ceiling. Ryan suspected Grasz wouldn’t give him information easily and had no idea how to approach him. Surely Grasz had seen him through the sniper scope before shooting Rincone?
“What are you in for?” Ryan asked, starting with an easy question.
Grasz rolled over to face the wall.
Ryan sighed. He might as well dive right in. “I heard you got your training in the Rangers and then joined Special Forces. What I want to know is, who paid you to shoot Rincone?”
Grasz remained silent.
“I found the prepaid card you left in the bushes. That was sloppy work. Sloppier still was getting caught because you left your fingerprints on the gun. I know the Army trained you better than that. So, who set you up?”
More silence.
“There’s more to this story than just you shooting a retired general. Someone is taking out their money laundering network, and you are now part of that. Rincone was going to lead us up the ladder to the mastermind.”
The sniper shrugged. At least he’d responded. They were making progress.
Ryan knew Grasz had trained in counter-interrogation techniques. It was safe to assume that if one took on the role of a hitman, he would eventually spend time in prison or die from a bullet. Ryan couldn’t promise Grasz a path to freedom or even leniency, but he needed information.
“Someone paid you with a prepaid debit card. So, how did they contact you?”
Grasz rolled over and stared at Ryan. “It doesn’t matter. You take out a cog, and another will take its place.”
“That’s true, but if you jam the cogs, the machine stops working,” Ryan replied.
“The machine never stops working. You stop one part, and another starts. There are a million Rincones out there. What’s one more dead Venezuelan?”
“What if I told you that the person at the top of this mess is killing military members to achieve his objectives? He took out a team of Marines in the Venezuelan jungle, and a friend of mine was the lone survivor. He wants revenge.”
Grasz sat up and heaved a lengthy sigh. He rested his elbows on his knees. “I got an envelope with directions and two prepaid cards in it. One had my normal fee on it, and the other was for expenses. I was to set up in the house and instructed to kill Rincone if someone tried to snatch him. I did my job. I’m sorry your operator died. He moved at the last second. Shame, too. But that’s life. If Rincone was involved in killing your friend’s team, then he’s paid the price.”
“Who contacted you?”
“Who cares? I got the money and the target.”
“Have you ever heard of a guy named The Armorer?”
“Nope.” Grasz stretched out again and put his hands behind his head. “I don’t know who you work for, but you’ve got some pull to get in here to see me, just to find out I don’t know a damned thing.”
Either Grasz had told him everything or he hadn’t told him anything. Ryan couldn’t be sure which and figured the sniper would take whatever else he knew to the grave. Lying back on his own bunk, Ryan closed his eyes and listened to the sounds of the prison. He would stay awake until the cops took him to a different cell. He didn’t trust the sniper, and after asking all the questions he had, he wondered if Grasz might give his handlers a two-for-one special and try to silence him as well.
As he lay in the dark, Ryan tried to lock the pieces of the puzzle together in his mind. This had started on a lonely jungle trail with the arrest of a government official. The only reason to wipe out the team was so that no one knew of Armond Diego’s involvement.
Diego worked for Undersecretary of Defense Victor Quintero. Rincone was a general, so he might have known Quintero. There were rumors that the Venezuelan government and its military were neck-deep in drug smuggling. The money Ryan and his team had been chasing could have come from the drug cartels. The entire drug system f
rom street dealers to the Colombian bigwigs seemed to be awash with cash to spare.
“Hey?” Ryan said to his cellmate.
Grasz rolled over. In the low light, Ryan could see the whites of the man’s eyes glowing, giving him a sinister appearance.
“Tell me if these names mean anything to you.” Ryan watched him closely, but it was hard to see the man’s expression. He said them slowly, pausing for effect between each one. “Armond Diego. Vincente Valdez. Oscar López.” Something behind Grasz’s eyes shifted. Ryan continued. “Paul Langston. Victor Quintero.”
The sniper remained unmoving. He could probably lie in that same position for days on end, not moving a muscle, waiting for his prey to appear.
“Someone paid you to take out Rincone,” Ryan persisted. “Those same people took out a lawyer in Panama, tried to kill a money launderer in St. Thomas, and now you’re next. Do you think you’ll get to live to a ripe old age in jail? They’ll come for you because you were dumb enough to get caught, or they set you up to fail. You’re a dead man either way.”
Slowly, the sniper unfolded himself from the bunk and sat on the edge again. “They planted my prints. I never handled the gun without gloves.”
“Who else was in the house?” Ryan asked.
“Two local guys.”
“Do you know their names?”
“Bob and Ron. I think they were Jamaicans by their accents,” Grasz said. “All I had to do was get to the house and take the shot. They provided the weapon and secured my shooting location.”
“You didn’t ask any questions?”
“I’m not Johnny Carson; I can’t put a white envelope to my head and guess who sent it. Inside, there were instructions, two prepaids, a passport, and a ticket from Atlanta to here. That’s it.”
“No return ticket?”
Grasz shook his head.
“That doesn’t bode well for you, does it? I bet your new friends are face down in the mangroves right now.”
“Probably.” Grasz laid back down. “Just remember, if I die in prison, me and Jeffrey Epstein will have something in common. We didn’t kill ourselves.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
The next day, Ryan, Mango, and Oscar went before the magistrate. Ryan was thankful that Whittaker had declined to press charges against the women. The men pled guilty to possessing illegal firearms, and they each paid a three-thousand-dollar fine. After Ryan used his DWR corporate credit card to pay the fees, Whittaker escorted them from the courthouse to the airport.
On the way, Whittaker told Ryan he’d been right. The two men had talked privately before Ryan had gone with Mango and Oscar to the courthouse. A tourist couple from Portugal had discovered two dead bodies while they were walking through an abandoned housing development near Rum Point on the northwestern side of the island. The dead men were members of a Jamaican cartel that smuggled drugs and weapons into the Caymans, and their prints matched those taken from the sniper’s house.
The police van pulled up beside the airplane Ryan had originally scheduled his team to leave on the day before. As they disembarked the van, the pilot came down the airstairs of the CASA C-212 Aviocar twin-engine turboprop. With a grin, he said, “I didn’t know the police ran a delivery service.”
“It’s like Uber but with guns, bro,” Mango said.
The pilot laughed and introduced himself as Zeke Williams. He was an independent carrier, flying a route around the Caribbean and based in Puerto Rico. The high wing plane had six passenger seats and a sizeable cargo area packed with bags and boxes. Ryan knew the plane by its military designation, the C-41A, and had made several parachute-training jumps from the rear ramp during his time in the Navy.
Once the passengers had strapped in, Zeke took off for their first stop in Jamaica.
An idea was formulating in Ryan’s mind about getting his pilot’s license. If they stayed in the Virgin Islands and continued to do operational activities for Dark Water Research and Trident as an independent salvage consultant, he would need a faster way to get around than by sailboat or by relying on private and commercial airlines. Emily had also talked about working remotely for Ward and Young, continuing to do insurance investigations. He could be her private pilot, and that thought put a smile on his face.
She nudged him with her shoulder. “What are you grinning about?”
He put his arm around her and kissed her forehead. “I’m happy to be alive and free.”
“Do we need to worry about your Interpol Red Notice?” she asked.
“I’ll need to file a dispute via a lawyer. Whittaker thought there was an excellent chance of getting it dropped because the Venezuelan government has a history of issuing Red Notices on people they have personal vendettas against.”
“What about Oscar’s notice?” she asked.
“We’ll have to fight it, too.”
“Will it show up every time you go through Customs?”
“Unfortunately,” Ryan said. “I’ll call Landis and talk to him about it.”
They made several stops along the way, eventually landing in St. Thomas close to nightfall.
Barry was there to meet Carmen. After giving her a hug, he trotted over to Ryan. “I have some stuff I want you to see.”
“Can it wait? I need to take a shower and get some sleep.”
“Sure. Sure. Yeah. No problem. Can you come over to my place tomorrow afternoon?”
“I’ll call you when I’m on my way over.”
Barry left with Carmen, and Ryan called Landis to tell him about the Red Notice. Landis called St. Thomas Customs and spoke with the agent in charge, who allowed Ryan and Oscar to check in without hassle. It was good to have friends in high places.
Using a convenient taxi, Emily, Jennifer, Mango, Oscar, and Ryan rode across the island to American Yacht Harbor and crashed on their respective sailboats. Oscar stayed in the V-berth on Windseeker, where Ryan could watch him. While he still had his suspicions about the Venezuelan, he was back to trusting that he was legit. Hopefully, when he saw Barry tomorrow, Ryan would know for sure, as the hacker had done a deep dive into Oscar’s history using the fingerprints and photo Carmen had taken of him on Grand Cayman.
Oscar was still understandably angry about Ryan and Mango tying him up when he told them that all they needed to do was ask for his cooperation.
As Ryan stood in the marina’s shower, letting the hot water pound his body, his brain pulsed with names. Diego. Quintero. Valdez. Rincone. Langston. How did they fit together? Diego. Quintero. Rincone. Valdez. Langston. Who was the mastermind? Obviously not Rincone, Langston, or Valdez. Two of them were dead, and the third was in witness protection. That left Diego and Quintero.
The epiphany of where to focus the hunt was short-lived when he heard an automatic weapon going cyclical outside the bathhouse.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Ryan jerked on his shorts over his wet body, forgoing toweling off in his hurry to get outside and see who was shooting, and at what. He dashed toward the exit and felt more than heard the bullets slam into the concrete wall of the bathhouse. Dust sifted down through the shaft of sunlight coming through the transom window above the door. He hadn’t brought a gun with him to the shower, and now he was regretting it.
Dropping to the concrete floor, Ryan crawled back toward the shower to put a second layer of block between himself and the shooter. The rounds continued to pockmark the outer wall, but they hadn’t broken through the inner layer of the block. Over the barrage of fire, Ryan heard sirens.
Suddenly, the bark of a pistol answered the roar of automatic fire, and the shooting stopped.
“Ryan!” Mango shouted. “You okay, bro?”
Ryan scrambled out of the shower stall and ran outside. Mango was kneeling over the dead body of Terrence Joseph and a still smoking M4 rifle.
“Who shot him?” Ryan asked.
“I did,” Mango said. “I dropped my gun in the water.”
Ryan glanced around at the people now appearin
g on the walkway. “I’d ask if there were any witnesses, but …” He trailed off as several police officers rounded the corner.
The police ordered them to put their hands up and step back from the body. As they did, Mango muttered, “This is getting to be really old, bro. You need to sort this shit out.”
“You ain’t kidding,” Ryan agreed.
Ryan smelled something burning and glanced over his shoulder to see thick black smoke pouring out of Windseeker’s cabin doors. Soul Patch had aerated her hull with multiple rounds.
Emily appeared in the cockpit, her hair wet and her clothes covered in soot. There was blood on her shirt and hands.
Ryan bucked against the cops. “That woman’s been shot! She needs help.”
He broke free and raced toward the smoking boat. Emily had disappeared into the cabin again. When he reached Windseeker, two police officers were right on his heels and followed him down the steps into the cabin. Flames danced and flickered along the galley countertop as they drew life from a severed propane tank and feasted on the decades-old wood that adorned the cabin. The interior felt like an oven, baking them on high.
Oscar lay at the base of the steps, half his head blown off along with multiple gunshot wounds to the chest and torso. Ryan surmised that Joseph had caught Oscar as he was entering the cabin and unloaded the entire magazine from his automatic rifle into the boat before turning his attention to the bathhouse.
“Grab him,” Ryan ordered the cops, and they hooked the dead man under his arms and hustled him out onto the dock. He turned to see Emily trying to douse the flames with a fire extinguisher. For a second, he paused and glanced around the cabin’s interior. His heart ached. His home was on fire, and his girlfriend was fighting a losing effort to douse the flames. There were so many memories, keepsakes, and possessions going up in flames. Yet the only one he cared to grab was the big blonde.