by Evan Graver
As Barry drove, Ryan called Mango. When he answered, Ryan told him to get ready to sail and explained the attack on Barry Thatcher’s home. They needed to get away from St. Thomas and regroup.
“We’ll be ready in an hour,” Mango said.
“Good,” Ryan replied. “I’ll see you soon.” He ended the call and leaned forward between the front seats. “What are the chances that your exfil route has been compromised?”
“They didn’t find the Jeep,” Barry said. He pulled to a stop at the taxi stand in front of the airport terminal.
Ryan got out of the back seat. “We’re leaving on Mango’s boat. If something happens, call me, and we’ll wait for you.”
“Thanks,” Carmen said as Barry pulled away.
Ryan took a taxi across the island. Halfway there, his phone rang. “What’s up?” he asked when he saw Carmen’s caller ID.
“Our boat has disappeared,” she said. “We’re heading your way.”
“What do you mean, disappeared?”
“Like, it’s not there. And there are two really sketchy-looking pendejos hanging around the dock.”
“Get to the American Yacht Harbor as fast as you can,” Ryan told her.
“We will. See you soon.” Carmen hung up, and Ryan kept watch out the cab’s rear window. He couldn’t see any tails, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there or that someone wouldn’t be waiting at the yacht club for him. St. Thomas was turning out to be more dangerous than he’d bargained for, and he’d left a trail of death and destruction in his wake.
Instead of going straight to the marina, Ryan had the cab driver drop him at the ferry terminal parking garage that he’d scouted before rescuing Diane Langston. He paid the cab fare and milled about with the other ferry passengers while he watched for tails or suspicious activity.
Their adversaries in Panama and those at Barry’s house hadn’t been shy about making themselves known, so Ryan was sure no one was following him when he walked into the marina store. Fortunately, he’d had his wallet with him when he went to the bathhouse to shower, so he had his credit cards and some cash. His shoulders dropped as he realized his stash of cash had gone up in flames. After asking about his and Mango’s boat fees, he laid his credit card on the counter, paid both their bills, and arranged for them to dispose of his burned-out boat hull. As he was signing the receipt, he saw Barry and Carmen pull into the parking lot.
He met the hackers at the Jeep and helped them carry their bags. No sooner had they set foot on the dock than Mango started the motors. Emily and Jennifer cast off the lines, and they held the boat in place as Carmen, Barry, and Ryan climbed aboard. Moments later, they were motoring away from the dock.
Emily found Ryan in the cockpit with Mango. The first thing she noticed was the nasty knot on his temple that was turning black and blue. “What happened?”
“I fell through a trapdoor when Barry’s house came under attacked.”
“Who attacked it?” Mango asked.
“I don’t know. The power went out and I looked out the window in time to see a commando come over the wall. Then all hell broke loose as they assaulted the house.” He went on to recount the story in detail.
As they exited Vessup Bay, Ryan told Mango to steer to port and follow the island around to a westerly heading. Then he entered a route for San Juan Bay Marina in San Juan, Puerto Rico, into the GPS plotter.
“Why are we going there?” Mango asked.
“We can get a direct flight to Miami. All of us. We’re not splitting up the band,” Ryan said.
Mango and Emily agreed.
Ryan fished his cell phone from his pocket and checked his email. The last one he’d received had been from Carmen, and it contained the information about Pops Griffin and his card-buying spree. He finished reading, then dialed Scott’s phone number.
When the former SEAL answered his phone, Ryan explained about Webster Griffin and their need to surveil him. Scott quickly agreed to meet them at the Miami airport with gear bags and weapons for him and Mango, and the two men had a brief conversation about vehicles, manpower, and priorities before Ryan hung up.
“What’s the plan?” Mango asked.
“We’ll follow this Griffin character to his drop and work our way up the chain.”
“As Yogi Berra said, ‘It’s like déjà vu all over again,’” Mango quipped.
“You’re not kidding.” Ryan ran both hands through his hair, careful to avoid his newly formed goose egg. “This thing has more moving parts than a Swiss clock.”
“I guess we’ll see what happens when the machine stops,” Mango said.
“That’s easy,” Emily replied. “The owner of the clock sends in a hit team.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” Ryan said. “There’s something we’re missing that I can’t pinpoint. Normally, we can figure out who the head of the operation is, but this guy has buried himself under layer upon layer of paperwork and shell corps, so he seems like he’s untouchable.”
“Something will break loose,” Mango said. “It always does.”
Chapter Forty
During the sail from St. Thomas to San Juan, Ryan and Mango took turns at the wheel. It was during one of his brief stints away from the bridge that Ryan dialed the voicemail box for his satellite phone that had burned on his boat, intending to forward the calls to his new phone.
There were several messages, each several seconds long before ending. The last one contained nothing more than a phone number spoken in heavily accented English, and Ryan had to replay it several times to interpret what the caller had said. He recognized the +58 country code from his time in Venezuela. Glancing around the salon, he saw Barry and Carmen had their heads buried in their laptops and Emily and Jennifer were outside on the trampoline.
He retreated to the aft deck where his sat phone had a clear view of the sky and sat on a small sofa. Dialing the number that the mystery caller had left on his voicemail, he put the phone to his ear.
When the man on the other end answered, Ryan said, “Buenos dias.”
In Spanish, the other man replied, “Who is this?”
“You called my sat phone.” Ryan recited the number for the man. Now that he had a decent connection, the man wasn’t as hard to understand, especially when speaking in his native Spanish.
“I was told to call that number if I couldn’t reach Oscar. Who are you, and what has happened to Sergeant López?”
“Oscar is dead.”
“How did he die?” the man asked.
“Who am I speaking to, and why did Oscar tell you to call me?”
“My name is Mario Estevez.”
Ryan straightened and felt his heartbeat increase, instantly recognizing the man’s name. He was finally talking to Oscar’s contact in Venezuela. “Are you Colonel Estevez of the Venezuelan Army Special Forces?”
“Yes.”
“Can you speak freely?” Ryan asked.
“I can.”
“You know that Oscar’s team was ambushed and killed, right?”
“Yes,” Estevez said.
“After he left the jungle, Oscar tracked a bank account to a money launderer in the U.S. Virgin Islands. That’s where I met him. We worked together to find a man with the code name of The Armorer.”
“I don’t know that name,” the colonel said.
“Did you know General Rincone?”
“I did. He defected.”
“He’s dead, too. So is a lawyer in Panama City named Valdez,” Ryan said.
“I don’t know Valdez.”
“What about Armond Diego and Victor Quintero?” Ryan asked.
“Diego is dead. He was shot in the back of the head, along with his wife and children, in his home in Caracas. The news is reporting that an opposition group is responsible for their deaths, but that is not the case. Victor Quintero has fled the country, and he’s practiced a scorched earth policy on his way out the door.”
“Where did he go?” Ryan asked.
“W
here all rich Venezuelans go when they leave—Miami.”
“You’re telling me that Victor Quintero defected to the U.S. and is living in Florida?” Ryan demanded.
“Yes. He left a month ago.”
Ryan pondered this for a moment as he digested the information.
Estevez interrupted his thinking. “Quintero has plundered our treasury and robbed Venezuela blind with his transactions with the Russians. He was Venezuela’s principle armorer for more than a decade. Now, he is selling himself to the U.S. government. He is a traitor.”
“And he’s eliminating anyone who has any dirt on him.”
“Exactly.”
Ryan closed his eyes, focusing on what Estevez had just said. He had called Quintero Venezuelan’s principle armorer. The Armorer. It fit. It had to be. If he could tie Quintero to the guy purchasing the prepaid cards in the U.S., they could confirm that Quintero was The Armorer.
“In our search through banking records, we found a Swiss bank account tied to multiple shell corporations,” Ryan said. “One of which was supplying General Rincone with a monthly stipend. Do you know anything about that?”
“Quintero was well known for overpaying for military hardware and receiving kickbacks from suppliers,” Estevez said. “The worst deal we discovered was for five thousand shoulder-fired missiles that he purchased from the Russians in anticipation of an invasion by the United States. He overpaid by millions of dollars. If I had to guess, he was paying Rincone to keep quiet.”
“Oscar told me that officials in the Venezuelan government are protecting drug shipments through their country. Is that true?”
“Sure,” Estevez said. “That is the truth. Your government has placed a bounty on Maduro and his officials for just such a reason.”
Ryan’s mind raced to make connections. Barry had said that money had come from a bank on the Crimean Peninsula. The Russian military could have funded the account in Crimea and wired it to Switzerland for Quintero. Even if he could see all the connections, he would have a tough time proving them in court or even to his DHS handler, Landis, who always wanted an overwhelming avalanche of evidence before moving in on a subject. If Quintero was now a pawn in the chess match between the United States and Venezuela, it would complicate matters even further.
“Hola?” Estevez said.
“I’m sorry, Colonel. I was thinking. Are you somewhere safe?”
“Nowhere is safe, but I am in Colombia. I am training members of the opposition.” He let out a sigh. “I, too, am a defector from my beloved country, but there is much work to do. We must replace Maduro for our country to move forward.”
“Good luck, Colonel,” Ryan said.
“I hope you get that bastardo Quintero. He has done much to harm my country and my people. Avenge him for myself and for Sergeant López.”
Ryan gripped the phone tighter, both feeling and hearing the emotion in Estevez’s words. “I will, Colonel.”
The call ended, and Ryan laid the phone onto the sofa beside him. What Estevez had said made sense. Every path they’d been down had led to either a dead end or a dead body. If they were all connected to Quintero, then he was certainly cleaning house. He was just coating the walls with blood instead of fresh paint.
Back in the catamaran’s salon, Ryan sat beside Carmen. “Can you find me any information relating to the Russians selling a shipment of five thousand shoulder-fired missiles to Venezuela?”
She looked at him with a puzzled expression, then shrugged and began typing. Ryan looked over her shoulder, and within a few seconds, she had dozens of hits to her search terms. “What do you want to know?”
“Who are the principles, and where the money from Venezuela went.”
“Give me some time, okay?”
“Yeah. No problem.” Turning to Barry, Ryan asked what he was working on.
“I’m trying to figure out how those mercenaries found my house and who they were.” He looked up to face Ryan with determination and anger in his eyes.
“Are you having any luck?” Ryan asked.
“I’m going through security cam footage and the other data I’d uploaded to my servers in Norway. I don’t know how they found me, but I’ll figure it out. Then I’ll make them pay.”
Ryan’s eyebrows rose. He was seeing a vindictive side to Barry that he hadn’t seen until now. The hacker’s gaze flicked away from Ryan to share a moment with Carmen before returning to his laptop screen.
“Keep digging, both of you,” Ryan said.
“I booked us on a flight from San Juan to Miami, like you asked,” Carmen said.
“Good girl. She’s a keeper, Barry.”
He didn’t look up from his rapid typing, but mumbled, “I know.”
Ryan stood and went up to the bridge, where Mango had his feet propped on the wheel and was strumming his flattop. He told Mango everything Estevez had said, and they tried to link him with all the deaths they had seen over the last couple of weeks. Neither of them had any concrete connections, but both agreed that, taken as a whole, he was the most likely mastermind. The best course of action was to track the prepaids and hope they led to Quintero.
It wasn’t long before Carmen joined them on the bridge and stretched out on the sunpad just aft of the navigation station. She lay on her stomach and rested her head on her hands as if she were going to sleep.
“What did you find out about the missiles?” Ryan asked.
Without opening her eyes, she said, “Quintero was the Undersecretary to the Minister of Defense for the last ten years. He was involved in buying everything from tanks to jet fighters from Russia. He purchased the five thousand missiles. The military likes to put them on display, and there are pictures all over the Internet of soldiers and civilians holding them, including a nine-year-old girl. But without sending someone into the ministry building in Caracas, we won’t be able to look at the purchase records because everything is on paper. Which is smart for them.”
Ryan blew out a long breath through puffed-up cheeks. Another dead end. If Oscar hadn’t shot Valdez, they could have asked him who The Armorer was and saved themselves countless hours of work, but now both Valdez and Oscar were dead, along with dozens of mercs and former Venezuelans. He wondered if Grasz was still alive in the Cayman prison.
An hour later, Barry stepped onto the bridge. He had four beers clasped between his fingers and handed one each to Carmen, Ryan, and Mango. “I’ve got bad news.”
“What is it?” Ryan asked.
“I identified one of the men who came over the wall at my house as Mike Thornton. Guess which PMC he worked for.”
“The infamous Russian group Wagner?” Mango asked.
“Academi?” Ryan asked, referring to the new name of what used to be Blackwater, one of the most famous PMCs in the world.
“Both of you are wrong.” Barry took a sip of beer. “He worked for Trident.”
It took Ryan several long seconds to formulate a thought beyond what the hell?
Mango beat him to the punch. “No way. Greg didn’t send guys after you.”
“I used facial recognition and that led me to his military file and his employment record at Trident. That means one of two things. Either you assholes attacked my house and are using me or”—he held up a second finger—“someone falsified Trident’s records.”
“There’s one way to find out.” Ryan reached for his phone and dialed the number for Jinks at Trident’s headquarters in Texas City. The phone rang three times before Jinks came on the line, and when Ryan told him about the attack on Barry’s house and how the facial recog scan had led back to Trident, Jinks was just as incredulous as Ryan and Mango had been.
At Ryan’s request, Jinks typed Mike Thornton into the Trident database and found a file labeled Foxtrot Team. Inside was the employment record for every assaulter on Barry’s home. Jinks echoed Ryan’s earlier thought. “What the hell? These guys don’t work for us. I’ve never heard of them.”
“Then you’ve been hacke
d, and you’re being set up to take the fall,” Barry stated.
“There are employment records, pay receipts, mission briefs, and training records. These hackers were thorough,” Jinks said.
“Wipe it all,” Ryan said. “And get Ashlee to set up a better firewall.”
“Roger that.”
Ryan hung up and pocketed the phone. “How is one man able to execute operations all over the world and orchestrate sophisticated cyber-attacks at the same time? This dude has deep pockets.”
“Or he has help from a foreign government,” Mango replied. “If Quintero was in bed with the Russians, maybe they’re trying to cover their tracks. He could spill the beans about all kinds of hinky shit going on in both countries.”
“Whoever it is,” Barry said, “they’re doing everything they can to stop you from finding out who The Armorer really is. I’m ready to get off this crazy train.”
“You and me both, bro,” Mango said. “Jenn and I are supposed to be opening a charter business in St. Thomas, and now I’m probably persona non grata there. We need to be done with this shit so we can go back to our daily lives.”
Ryan agreed with both men, but he also knew his daily life was just filler for between missions. It was becoming clearer to him that he was no longer a reluctant participant in chasing bad guys, but a person who actively ran toward danger because he felt the need to protect others.
Right now, he needed to protect the people on the boat with him. Whoever they were after was one step ahead of them and seemed to know every move they were making.
Chapter Forty-One
Miami, Florida
After clearing Customs at Miami International Airport, Ryan and his team stepped outside the terminal to get a ride to a rental car company. As they stood on the sidewalk, waiting for a shuttle bus, a Ford Explorer pulled alongside the curb and the window rolled down.
Scott Gregory grinned at them from the driver’s seat. “What’s up, punks?”
“I thought we were meeting at the hotel,” Ryan said.
“Things are moving fast. I need to talk to you.”