True Honor

by Dee Henderson

  “You mean something interesting is happening in this world and you haven’t told me? What do you have?”

  “You know Ramon Santigo’s family who paid out all that money on the rumor of your death?”

  “They found out the truth . . . They’re here . . . I’m back to watching my back?”

  Gabe held up his hand. “They’re dead. They got into a fight with the national army of Paraguay over a piece of property, and the army literally decimated their compound during the assault. You’re in the clear at least on that front, Dar. The threat is gone.”

  Darcy blinked. “Gone.” It had lingered over her head for so long, she didn’t know what to feel. “Oh my.”

  He held out the report. “It’s classified, but you’re welcome to read it if you like.”

  She shook her head. “I’d rather not.”

  “The good guys won this round.”

  Darcy took a deep breath and relaxed. “Okay, thanks. This is good.”

  Her computer played “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” Darcy leaned over to grab the phone, relieved to have work to divert her attention. She pushed Ramon Santigo to a corner to think about later. “There’s my buddy.”

  “Halfway around the world and he’s more prompt than my mother in her weekly check-up calls,” Gabe commented.

  “You’re just jealous that my network of snitches is deeper than yours.”

  “Tag me if you get something.”

  She nodded and he closed the door to give her privacy for the call.

  There was no better contact for the inside scoop on boats than the warranty officer at the factory headquarters for the most prestigious line of personal pleasure craft out there. Someone filed paperwork on a claim, transferred ownership, and she knew all about the owner and the boat the same day. All she needed to find was one link to a name, an address, or an account on her watch list, and she would have a lead she could work. All it cost her was a hundred bucks per call. She loved this part of the hunt when it worked out and was incredibly frustrated when it didn’t. She started taking notes about the boats he had seen paperwork on recently.

  Her computer played her school’s fight song and a red flash traffic warning flag appeared in the corner of the screen. Darcy reached over and opened the code word area. An oil refinery in Mobile, Alabama, just exploded.

  JULY 22

  Monday, 10:45 a.m.

  Norfolk Naval Air Base

  The noise was deafening as another transport plane took off, straining to get enough lift to climb into the sky. Soon this plane would be taking off. Sam heaved the case of swim gear to the back of the pallet being loaded aboard the transport aircraft. SEAL Team Nine was deploying to join up with the amphibious task group now refueling in Puerto Rico, their team replacing SEAL Team Five doing ship interdiction missions.

  “Cougar.”

  Sam turned and took the heavy case Wolf passed him. “This is getting old fast.” They were loading their mine detection gear.

  “You need the weight training,” Wolf pointed out.

  Sam shoved the case into place and turned for the next one, only he took his time checking the tag numbers.

  “Hey.”

  “Got to get the paperwork right.” Sam let Wolf come close to dropping the case before Sam took it. “Now who needs the weight training?”

  Wolf laughed.

  Sam secured the case. Persistent intelligence reports suggested someone planned to mine major seaports in an attempt to cripple international shipping between North America and Latin America. Sam didn’t relish the idea of swimming around a harbor trying to find explosives without setting them off, but it had to be done. Blow holes in and sink one of those huge cargo transport ships and the insurance rates would skyrocket and cripple trade through the region.

  “Are you going to get a chance to say good-bye to Darcy?”

  Sam took the next case from Wolf. “I hope to see her Thursday night.”

  Two months stateside. It was more than he hoped to get, but it was still too short. Sam signaled the loadmaster that the pallet was ready to pull in. He was beginning to ask himself whether the separations were worth it. He’d been a soldier a long time, and his time in the field with the SEALs would end soon, for it was a young man’s job. More time to visit his parents while their health was still good, time with Darcy— He cared more about her than he did the Navy. That realization paused him midmovement.

  Lord, what do You think? After this deployment, should I do a little quiet asking around about options? It was time to think about life after being a SEAL. He wanted Darcy in his future.

  “Chief.” Wolf jerked him out of the way before a forklift bringing in a massive pallet of replacement fuel drums hit him.

  “Sorry.”

  Wolf slapped his chest. “Distracted guys on the flight line get dead.”

  JULY 22

  Monday, 3:18 p.m.

  Central Intelligence Agency

  Darcy pushed the button on her phone that signaled a hot alert to Gabriel for the third time in less than a minute. He was down the hall. She was getting close to rolling her chair back to the hallway and shouting at him to get down here.

  “I heard you the first time,” he remarked mildly from her doorway. “And security frowns at the newspaper stuck in the doorway to keep the lock from engaging.”

  “Rag at me later. Sit.”

  “I’m deep into trying to figure out how a confirmed accident at an oil refinery in Mobile, Alabama, results in the director of the Agency asking me to chase down a wildcatter who worked to put out the Kuwaiti oil field fires. The man is somewhere in Siberia at the moment, and I’m supposed to get him back here overnight. I’m trying to negotiate with the Russian military to provide a helicopter for transportation.”

  “Ask an Alaskan charter service to dart over and get him. For the right price, they’ll do it. Look.” She turned the screen toward him and showed him the data she was studying. “Would you say after that 10:18 a.m. refinery fire the lines on the graph in red went up faster than the lines in blue?”

  “That’s clear.”

  “Red lines are brokerage accounts the Treasury Department thought might be tied to Luther but couldn’t prove. That oil refinery fire just shot up gas contract prices, yielding Luther a profit of ninety million. And the profit of these suspicious accounts far exceeds what experts who invest in oil and gas accounts have done: Those blue lines are our control group.”

  Gabriel studied the data. “Luther couldn’t have known an accident was coming. He must have known a terrorist attack was coming that would disrupt gas refining capabilities and has quietly been making his bets. The accident had the effect of tipping his hand to even a blind man, leaving Luther dangling out here with a huge spotlight on him.”

  Darcy tried to spin in her chair with joy only to come up against the open file cabinet drawer. “The only way Luther can remain hidden is if he disavows all of these accounts and never touches the money. But given his personality, he won’t be able to walk away. Luther will try to move the money from these accounts. The minute he does, we’ll have him.”

  “Nicely done, Dar.”

  She let herself soak in the relief that she had a solid lead to work, then turned serious. “They must have been planning a refinery or pipeline attack as a September 11 anniversary hit.”

  “A threat we can work now that we have a reason to put it at the top of the threat list,” Gabe said. “Trail that money, Dar. And tell the Treasury guys to be as discreet and as fast as they can on those taps.”

  “Bring in pizza for dinner tonight. I work better on a full stomach.”

  * * *

  The phone rang at Darcy’s desk at 10 p.m. She glanced at the caller ID, turned down The Marriage of Figaro playing at full volume, and picked it up. “Hey, Sam.”

  “I call your home thinking it’s late, but I want to hear her voice, so I’ll wake her up. And low and behold, you’re not only awake but sitting next to the phone.”
>
  “I wouldn’t want to miss your call,” she replied, smiling as she turned the pages of a report. “Actually I’m still at the office; I forwarded my home phone here. My workaholic tendency is showing itself again. Did you know there are 168 barbecue stands in Dallas, Texas?”

  Sam laughed. “No, can’t say that I did.”

  “The trivia struck me as interesting. And don’t ask me why someone bothered to count them.” She rested her feet on the corner of the open file cabinet drawer and reached for the next report on her desk.

  “I see, you collect trivia to compensate for all the heavy stuff you read. Did you get dinner?”

  Darcy looked at the remains of her dinner in the box. “The pizza is down to nothing but crumbs but at least this time Gabe was the one who ate most of it. He shared his pizza crusts with the bomb dog. You know that oil refinery fire in Alabama? It triggered a lead on you know who.”

  “A good one?”

  “Really good.”

  “Part of SEAL Team Nine flew near the refinery site on the way back to Little Creek tonight. They said the fire was still visible.”

  She looked at the television at the end of her desk. Flames and glowing heat with heavy black smoke still rose into the air. “It’s going to be tough to extinguish.”

  “They’ll do it.”

  “Did you get your gear packed for the deployment?”

  “We’re loaded,” Sam confirmed. “The plane is going out ahead of us, so others will get the pleasure of unloading the equipment and transferring it aboard ship. How late are you going to be at that desk tonight?”

  She looked at the computer screen, watching the U.S. Treasury taps on the accounts. Already Luther had moved money out of one-third of the accounts. They still hadn’t cracked the second tier of accounts, but it was only a matter of time. Luther was moving money, and the money would lead them to him.

  “As long as it takes.” She watched another account move to the transferred column. Because this oil refinery accident had tipped Luther’s hand before the date he thought something would happen, there was a chance he wouldn’t have as many blinds and cover accounts set up that they would have to penetrate. “I had some news today.”

  “What’s that, Dar?” he asked, his serious tone matching hers.

  “Ramon Santigo’s family is dead. There is no more threat from that quarter.”

  “An answer to prayer.”

  “I’m still trying to sort it out in my head.”

  “My body is still on mountain time. I’m wide-awake; you want to talk awhile?”

  “I’d appreciate it. How about you get today’s crossword puzzle and a pencil, fix yourself one of your milkshakes, and call me back? I’d like your company. I’m watching others work at the moment and waiting for something I recognize to cross the screen.”

  “Sounds good. I’ll call you back in twenty minutes.”

  Darcy said good-bye and hung up the phone, relieved she would be able to talk with him tonight as she sorted out the implications of at least this threat being gone. She loved the fact that their phone calls during free moments were now the pattern for their relationship rather than just an occasional thing. She would miss their daily contact when he deployed. She tried not to burden him with her sadness. It was part of what she had to adjust to in having a relationship with a soldier.

  Lord, please keep him safe. I’m falling deeply in love with that man. I want our relationship to survive this deployment. I’m slowly learning to leave this stress and burden with You, but it’s a profound one, wondering if he’ll be safe through this deployment.

  Luther was one of the threats still out there. She’d promised Sergey a message when they had something; this lead on Luther qualified. Sergey might be in a position to act on it faster than they could. When to make the call was a decision to be made by others. But if it were up to her, she’d give him as much of a head start as she could. She didn’t want Sam or one of his friends going after Luther if Sergey could do it for them.

  She picked up the next report on the stack while keeping an eye on the money transfers. Peaceful nights at work, with leads they could pursue . . . This was why she loved this job.

  And at least for the moment she didn’t think her name was on anyone’s hit list.

  Twenty-Three

  * * *

  JULY 31

  Wednesday, 4:18 p.m.

  USS HAILEY / Caribbean Sea

  The surveillance ship USS Hailey sailed into the warm waters of the Caribbean Sea. The lights in the ship’s command center were dimmed as sailors manning sophisticated monitors tracked every ship currently at sea within six hundred miles through a combination of satellite and surveillance aircraft. Sam watched with Bear as a ship with a manifest claiming a cargo of wheat, cotton, and spices tracked north of St. Croix Island near the British Virgin Islands. If intel from the Colombian port where the ship had last docked was right, it was also carrying twenty cases of high explosives.

  “When do we hit it?” Sam asked.

  “Defense Intelligence is still trying to figure out who purchased the explosives and where it’s heading,” Bear replied. “For now we watch. They think the transfer will happen at sea. The cargo ship is easy to track, but anything smaller than a fifty-foot trawler will get lost in the wave clutter.” Joe pointed to the map, which showed in three dimensions the thirteen islands in the area. “There has to be a reason the cargo ship has left the normal deep water shipping lane and is tracking to the east. One of these islands is probably the intermediate destination for those explosives. It makes sense that the smugglers are using one of those uninhabited islands as a way station of sorts.”

  Sam studied the water depths. “The cargo ship can stay on this present course probably another day before it has to move back toward deeper water.”

  “There’s no moon tonight, and a transfer like this would not be something you would want to do during the day. I want to fly out ahead of the ship and position four of us about . . . here.” Joe indicated a point that would put them at equal distance between the islands and where the ship would pass. “We don’t know where the smaller boat might originate, but we know its destination is to meet up with that cargo ship. We sit and watch what’s moving in the area.” Joe signed for a copy of the map printed for the SEAL Team Nine full briefing.

  Sam looked at the map. “I volunteer Wolf, sir, to be one of those forward observers.”

  Joe laughed. “Accepted. You and Wolf, Frank and myself, doing the reconnaissance, with two teams of six on standby in helos ready to raid the boat if we get a green light to take the shipment tonight.”

  JULY 31

  Wednesday, 10:18 p.m.

  Central Intelligence Agency

  “Darcy.”

  She was trying to sleep on her couch, but it was at best a doze. She moved the pillow from atop her face to look over at her partner. Gabriel had taken over the thread of a lead she was working on. “Got something?” Luther’s money had disappeared into a black hole twenty-four hours after the refinery fire, and nine days of chasing it had simply given her a headache.

  “I’ll qualify it to a maybe.”

  She sat up and pushed aside the jacket she’d been using as a cover because the air-conditioning in the building was freezing her out.

  “We found the first pool account,” Gabe said.

  Darcy studied the screen. The Treasury Department had cracked the stubborn third layer of shell accounts. Five transfers had all eventually ended up in an account in the Bahamas. As she watched, a sixth deposit was made. “What’s the bank name?”

  “First Capital Bank, Nassau.”

  “Not one we had suspected before.”

  “A bit of a surprise there,” Gabe agreed. “And the location is a little farther north than I would have expected to find Luther. I figured he would be down among the Lesser Antilles Islands, maybe using Barbados or Venezuela for one of his major bank stops.”

  “Twelve million. This is going to be s
erious money soon. Who do we have in Nassau?” Darcy asked.

  “The Agency has two guys who were down there on vacation. For now we’re asking them to find a place to watch the bank on the slim chance a withdrawal is made from there rather than another transfer. We risk tipping our hand if we inquire about the account too soon.”

  “Look at the pattern of movements—four transfers from the initial accounts until it reaches this pool account. And the accounts being transferred to this one are all high account numbers in that original list. There is at least one other pool account out there,” Darcy guessed. “Can we get a list of accounts in the Bahamas accepting multiple transfers in the last seventy-two hours that are now above ten million in assets?”

  “If we can’t, some serious diplomatic pressure needs to be applied.” Gabe picked up the phone to call their counterparts in Treasury. “How do you feel about going to the Bahamas, Dar?” he asked as he dialed.

  “My suitcase is packed and in the trunk of my car.”

  “If the money is still in this account in three hours, I want us on a plane going south.”

  Darcy lifted an eyebrow at the fact Gabriel was ready to make that kind of forward move, but she nodded and reached for the other phone. They would travel under their own passports but would carry optional documents to let them switch names if needed to long-established covers. Sometimes it was beneficial not to travel as Americans.

  JULY 31

  Wednesday, 11:10 p.m.

  Caribbean Sea

  Sam was stretched out on his stomach against the tough black rubber of the six-by-fifteen-foot Zodiac, finding comfort in the familiar texture as the boat rode four-foot sea swells. He searched 180 degrees of the horizon with thermal-vision sights. Wolf, stretched out on the other side of the craft facing the opposite direction, scanned the other 180 degrees. Bear and Frank were in a Zodiac craft a quarter mile to the east doing the same type of search.

  The huge cargo ship was like a lumbering elephant on the horizon; it would pass by in half a mile. The two Zodiacs were black spots on the water in a black night, only twenty-eight inches from the surface of the sea. They were invisible even when someone knew they were present. It gave them the advantage. The craft they sought had to be able to transport heavy if not voluminous cargo. The engines of such a boat would be glowing heat sources through the thermal sights.