by Evan Graver
“Glad we cleared that up,” Scott huffed. Turning to Ryan, he said, “What now?”
“Barry, can you take the money off the cards as fast as they’re putting it on?”
“Sure. I’ll just move it into an escrow account that I use.”
“Great. Do it, and we’ll see what happens when they try to use them.”
“Okay. I’ll start now,” Barry said.
“Thanks,” Ryan said and hung up.
Scott leaned his head back against the headrest and blew out a sigh. “How long before they notice the money is missing?”
“Who knows,” Ryan said.
“I wonder how many times we could switch cards before they’d notice?” Scott asked. “We could scam a ton of cash that way.”
Ryan shrugged. He had thought about the same thing. He could have Barry dip straight into the account and bypass the cards all together. That would definitely get someone’s attention. They needed to know where the money was coming from. Some of it was proceeds from the club as a legitimate business, but stealing it all would scare the hell out of everyone up and down the power structure.
As they watched, a black Lincoln Town Car pulled into the parking lot, and the club owner got out of the passenger seat. She wore a similar dark blue business suit with a skirt to the one she’d been wearing in the picture Scott had shown Emily and Ryan. Her heels were around three inches high, and she carried a briefcase in one hand. Behind her was a tall, beefy man.
“Who’s the guy?” Emily asked.
“That’s her EP—executive protection,” Ryan said, noting the way the man constantly scanned his surroundings and kept his principle close at hand. He was packing in a shoulder holster beneath his suit jacket.
“She has to know her club is being used to launder money and who she’s laundering it for,” Emily said. “I think we should talk to her. We need to push this along. I’m ready to look for another boat and get back on the water.”
Ryan turned to look at her, knowing full well his mouth was open in surprise.
She smiled coquettishly. “I like Jenn and Mango’s cat. We should get something like that.”
Scott flicked his wrist and made a sound like a cracking whip.
“Don’t be jealous, Scott,” Emily said.
“What’s this chick’s name?” Ryan asked, referring to the club owner. Turning around to face the street, he gave a glance into each mirror to check their flanks.
“Candice Vaughn,” Scott said.
Ryan chuckled. “That sounds like a stripper name.”
“I’ve seen her in the club. The girls said she used to work on stage and suddenly came into some money and bought the place.”
“Maybe Uncle Quintero financed a new business venture to help launder his cash?” Ryan suggested.
“Could be,” Scott replied. “She has a nice apartment near Haulover Inlet, too.”
“Do you have a tracker on her car?” Emily asked.
“No, but I can put one on it,” Scott volunteered.
“What do you know about her EP?” Ryan asked.
“Just that he’s always around.”
“Put the tracker on,” Ryan said.
Scott ran across the street and planted the tracker under the rear of her vehicle while Ryan moved to the Explorer’s driver’s seat. They pulled away as soon as Scott was back in the SUV.
Two blocks later, Emily said, “Vaughn’s GPS says she’s moving.”
Ryan swung into a shopping center and parked until they could figure out which direction Vaughn was heading. Vaughn’s black Town Car passed them and continued north. Ryan fell in behind it while Scott called the others to tell them they were in pursuit of the club owner and gave them her license plate and vehicle description.
Vaughn’s driver turned left and headed west.
Ryan turned their Explorer around and followed discreetly, but he couldn’t help wondering if this was just another wild goose chase.
Chapter Forty-Three
Twenty-five minutes later, Ryan, Emily, and Scott watched as the black Lincoln Town Car they’d been following pulled into a parking structure beside Marlins Park, the stadium where the Miami Marlins played. Ryan pulled into the parking lot of a shuttered gas station across the street.
“Get in there, Scott,” Ryan ordered.
Scott glanced down at the tablet they’d been using to follow the tracking device on Vaughn’s car, then got out and ran across the street. There were two massive parking garages that looked like many of the shopping plazas and apartment buildings around the greater Miami area. Palm trees lined the street, obscuring the view of the retail spaces on the garages’ ground floors.
Emily climbed over the center console into the front seat. She gripped Ryan’s hand, and he returned the squeeze without taking his eyes off the parking structure. Neither of them lost their focus on the job as they held hands. Candice Vaughn had connections to Hotshots, Inc. and was the sudden recipient of an infusion of cash that had allowed her to purchase the strip club, and someone was loading the prepaid cards in her office. She was a key piece in The Armorer’s money laundering operations. They couldn’t afford to lose her now, and this was the perfect place to get lost in a crowd.
“There’s a silver Range Rover coming out of the west garage,” Emily said.
Ryan saw it pull up to the stop light and make a right turn without slowing. “Shit, that was Vaughn’s EP in the driver’s seat.” He grabbed his phone and dialed Scott. When the former SEAL answered, Ryan asked, “Have you found the Town Car?”
“Yeah, I’ve got eyes on it.”
“Is there anyone inside?”
“No, there’s no one inside.”
“Get back here, now,” Ryan ordered. “They left in a different vehicle.”
Ryan hung up without hearing Scott’s acknowledgment and dialed Jinks and Rick Hayes on a conference call. When both men were on the line, he told them that Vaughn had changed vehicles and gave them a description before telling them the Range Rover had turned east on Northwest Seventh Street and they were in pursuit.
“He’s turning right,” Emily said, pointing at the silver SUV.
Scott ran out of the garage, and Ryan gunned the Explorer through the red light, slowed at the curb just long enough to let Scott hop in the back seat, and took off again. He made the same turn the Range Rover had into a residential neighborhood. They rolled through two blocks before making two more turns and heading south on to Northwest Twelfth Avenue.
“Who’s with me?” Ryan asked into the phone.
“This is Jinks. I’m on your six and see you and the Rover. Fall back and I’ll take over.”
“Got it,” Ryan said, slowing to make a turn off the main road and watching his mirror as Jinks sped past in his Jeep Wrangler.
“Where are you, Rick?” Ryan asked.
“I’m on I-95, passing downtown Miami. Where do you want me?”
“I don’t know yet,” Ryan said.
“I’ll keep heading south.”
Jinks said, “I’m going to pass them. Ryan, you take over again.”
“Give me one minute. We’re stuck at a red light.”
“Tell me when,” Jinks said through the Explorer’s radio speakers.
Ryan stopped at the red light and threw the transmission into park. He glanced at Emily. “Chinese fire drill?”
She grinned, and they threw open their doors and ran around the vehicle. Ryan hopped into the passenger seat, and Emily got into the driver’s side. They picked up the Range Rover after two blocks. Ryan told Rick to take I-95 until it turned into U.S. 1.
When Vaughn turned onto U.S. 1, Rick fell in behind her until she turned into a parking lot for a small park overlooking Biscayne Bay. Rick kept going, reporting Vaughn’s location over the cell phone.
Emily coasted the Explorer to a stop in another lot for the same park. Through the trees, they could see Vaughn and her EP climb from the Range Rover and head toward a group of boys playing soccer. Ry
an and Emily got out of their SUV and followed, hand in hand, across the green grass.
The EP stopped and let his principle walk ahead. Ryan and Emily walked past him, watching Vaughn take a seat on a park bench beside a man with a newspaper.
“Scott, do you see this?” Ryan asked into his Bluetooth earpiece.
“I see them, but I don’t know who the guy is.”
“That’s Victor Quintero,” Ryan said.
“Holy shit.”
“You got the camera?” Ryan asked.
“Yeah. I’ve got a few shots already. I’m on the far side of the soccer game.”
Ryan saw his partner squatting in the grass, photographing the boy’s game and their two principles on the bench. “Get a couple of good ones and let’s get out of here before the EP or Quintero’s security spot us. He has to have people somewhere.”
“Roger that,” Scott said.
As they retreated to the Explorer, Rick Hayes walked past eating an Icee from a cup. He didn’t acknowledge them as they passed, turning toward the bench where Quintero and Vaughn were sitting. A moment later, Rick said into the phone, “I’ve got eyes on two guys I think are Quintero’s EP. They look and smell liked Feds.”
“Jinks, you and Rick stay with Quintero. Let’s find out where he lives,” Ryan said.
“You got it, boss. I have to say this is better than deploying to Mauritania, where Greg had a team scheduled to go.”
“Are you putting your name in the hat for Caribbean operations, too?” Ryan asked.
“Beats Africa,” Jinks replied, and Scott concurred from the back seat of the Explorer.
“Just follow Quintero,” Ryan said, and ended the call. He drove south along Bayshore Drive, passing glittering marinas full of giant luxury yachts on the east side of the road and million-dollar homes and towering condo buildings on the west side. He turned onto Pan American Drive on Dinner Key and circled around the front of Miami City Hall, which sat on the edge of the water, overlooking the bay and Dinner Key Marina. He stopped in a City Hall parking lot beside Regatta Park, a lush green space that occupied the rest of Dinner Key.
“Did you know that Miami City Hall used to be the main terminal for Pan Am’s flying boats?” Emily asked.
“That’s cool,” Scott said.
The phone rang, and Ryan pressed the button on the steering wheel to answer Rick’s call. “Vaughn is leaving, and Quintero is on the move.”
“Stick with Quintero,” Ryan said.
“He’s heading south.”
A few minutes later, Jinks called and reported, “Quintero’s SUV just pulled into the Grove at Grand Bay.”
Emily pointed across the street. “That’s those twin towers over there. They call them the Twisted Towers.”
The two towers looked like someone had rotated each floor just a little more than the one below it, giving the structure the visual effect of twisting around its axis.
Ryan realized Emily knew or spent more time in South Florida than she’d told him. It was one of the boating capitols of the world, so she probably came here on business. He dialed Barry’s number and asked if the hacker could get into Candice Vaughn’s cell phone. Barry scoffed and complained about it being child’s play, then asked what Ryan wanted to know because he was already inside her Android operating system.
“Give me the number for Quintero. It should be one of her last calls.”
Barry read off three numbers with no caller ID while Ryan typed them into a note-taking app. Before Ryan could hang up, Barry said, “I know who hacked my system.”
“Who?” Ryan asked.
“It was a group based in Ukraine. Rumor has it they’re part of the Russian Federal Security Service.”
“Are they tracking you now?”
“No. I’m running off a server farm in Argentina and using a VOIP that masks my identity, plus—”
Ryan cut off the hacker. “Can you move all the money out of every account associated with The Armorer?”
“Sure. Yes. Hell, yes, I can do that. It’ll take me some time to set up some shell corps and I’ll have to bounce it around a bit, but yeah.”
“Good. Call me when you’re ready to press the button. When I tell you, I want every account balance zeroed out. If you have access to prepaid card numbers, ding those, too.”
“Okay. I’ll let you know as soon as I have everything set up.”
Ryan ended the call, and Emily asked what he was doing.
“If Quintero is The Armorer—and I suspect that he is—then he has protection as long as he’s here in the States and working for the U.S. government. Normally, I wouldn’t care about some defecting undersecretary and I hope they squeeze him for every ounce of intelligence he has to give, but this guy has killed a lot of people to get where he is. If we zero his account balances, I think we can flush him out. I think he’ll run toward someplace he has money stashed, and that will give us an opportunity to put an end to all of this.”
“And what about the money you take?” Emily asked.
Ryan shrugged as he gazed out the window at the luxury towers where Quintero lived. “We could use a new sailboat. I’m sure Scott and the rest of the crew would like to get paid for riding all over the Caribbean, and we’ll figure out how to give the rest of it back to Venezuela. If we can’t get it there, we can fund some other charities.”
“I don’t like it,” Emily said.
“It’s this or Quintero sits up in that apartment, fat, dumb, and happy,” Ryan said. “I can’t stand the thought of that.”
“Me, neither,” Scott chimed in.
“So, what’s the plan?” Emily asked. “How will we know if he’s running, and to where?”
“The one thing he’s proven to care about is the money,” Ryan explained. “Once it’s gone, he’ll have no assets here. If I were him, I’d have a boat or plane on standby. I doubt he’ll drive because there’s nowhere for him to go. This state is one giant peninsula with limited roads in or out.”
“He could drive to the West Coast or to the Keys and get on a boat there,” Emily objected.
“True, but from here, it’s a straight shot to the Bahamas, where we know he has accounts. It would be an easy run. We stake out the bank and put a sniper round in his brain as he walks in the front door.”
“Taking the money will spook him,” Emily said, “but if there’s anything we’ve learned about Quintero, it’s that he has plenty of resources. What are you going to do to make him run?”
“I’ll call him and tell him I know everything,” Ryan said. “Then Barry will zero his accounts. He’ll check them and see that the only one left is the one in the Bahamas. We’ll cut off all his lines of communication to the bank and force him to go there.”
“What about the FBI?” Scott asked. “If they’re babysitting him like Rick said, then they’ll be pretty pissed about what you’re doing.”
“Once he rabbits, I don’t think they’ll care,” Ryan said.
“I think they’ll be seriously pissed if you take him out. Maybe you should talk to Landis,” Scott suggested.
“I’ve had that conversation before,” Ryan replied. “He’ll say that Quintero enjoys the good graces of the DEA or whatever alphabet agency he’s working with, and we’re not to interfere with their ongoing operations.”
“I know you think this is best,” Emily said, “but there may be more at stake than we know. I think you should discuss it with Jinks—or Greg, at least.”
Ryan drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and glanced in the rearview mirror at Scott, who shrugged. He wanted to see Quintero pay for what he had done to Oscar, to Oscar’s team, for killing Rincone and Kirshen, and for fleecing the Venezuelan people. Ryan needed to do something, and he was afraid that if he spoke to Landis, he would be told to back off and no one would bring Quintero to justice. The defector would probably spend the rest of his days living on his ill-gotten gains and receiving subsidized housing courtesy of the American taxpayer.
Ryan
wondered if it would interest Maduro to know the whereabouts of his turncoat Undersecretary to the Minister of Defense. It wouldn’t be hard to send in Latinos to spy on Quintero’s activities; they seemed to be everywhere. Castro had done it many times, and there was probably a contingent of covert agents from every country operating in and around Miami. Ryan and his Trident team were just a drop in the bucket.
“I can see the wheels spinning,” Emily said.
“What if we did nothing but make a phone call?” Ryan asked.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
Scott leaned forward to hear better.
“Colonel Estevez is training troops in Colombia. What if I called him and let it slip where Quintero is living, and he sent someone to take care of the problem?”
Chapter Forty-Four
One Month Later
Tampa, Florida
Whiskey Joe’s Bar and Grill had become Ryan’s de facto hangout. The waitresses knew him by name and, whenever he sat down at the bar, they automatically placed a glass of water in front of him followed by a margarita on the rocks with salt on the rim. Shortly after, a plate of grouper tacos would arrive, and after eating, Ryan would spend the afternoon soaking up the sun on the little beach beside the bar.
In the mornings, he’d run the Courtney Campbell Causeway Trail from Emily’s apartment on Rocky Point to the causeway boat ramp and back, a distance of six miles. Some days, he’d swim there and back.
When sitting at the bar or in an Adirondack chair on the restaurant’s private beach, he spent his time staring at a laptop. He divided his time between surfing the Internet for a new sailboat and checking the news, expecting to see something about the death of Victor Quintero.
He took a drink of his margarita, the ice pressing against his upper lip. Not long after calling Colonel Estevez in Colombia, Ryan and Scott had driven to a duplex in a tree-lined suburb less than a mile from Quintero’s home in the Twisted Towers. After entering through the back door, a lawn service truck had pulled up in the front and disgorged a zero-turn mower from an enclosed trailer. A crew of three men ran string trimmers and the mower while a fourth walked to the duplex’s front door.