Savage Truth

by Jack Hardin

  Her handshake was firm. “Please,” she said. “Just Ellie. How was the drive up?”

  “I actually rode my boat in. Too nice of a day to take the car.”

  “Good choice,” she said.

  “Ellie.”

  She turned to face Gloria.

  “What exactly is it that you do?” Gloria asked. “Don’t you work for the FBI or something?”

  A humored look entered Ellie’s face. “I’m a special investigator for Homeland Security.”

  “Homeland? Is that a thing?”

  Ellie rolled her eyes as she smiled. “Afraid it is.”

  Warren appeared from out of the kitchen. Seeing Ellie, he said, “Hey, kiddo. You didn’t have to come down all this way just to see me off.”

  “Actually, I’m here to meet Agent Savage.”

  “Ah.”

  She stepped around the bar and gave Warren a hug. “Have a good time,” she said. “And be safe.”

  “I promise not to do anything Fu wouldn't do.”

  “Great.”

  As Ellie came back around, Warren looked back to me. “Anything else I can get you?”

  “No, sir. The burger was great. Thank you.” I went to reach for my wallet, but he stopped me. “No charge.” And before I could thank him, he retreated back into the kitchen.

  “He’s off to somewhere?” I asked Ellie.

  “He’s leaving this afternoon on a trip to the Virgin Islands. Are you ready? You can ride with me back to my house. We can talk there.”

  I grabbed my backpack and said goodbye to Fu and Gloria, then followed Ellie across the north end of the boardwalk, past a few picnic tables, and down a wooden ramp that led to a crushed-shell parking lot along the edge of the canal. Ellie stopped at a royal blue El Camino with white racing stripes down the side and opened the driver’s door.

  “This is your ride?” I asked. “Very nice.”

  She smiled. “It was my father’s.” Then she got in.

  I went around to the other side and joined her in the cab. It smelled of old vinyl and faintly unburnt hydrocarbons left behind by the carburetor, a nostalgic concoction that beat a new car smell any day.

  Ellie keyed the engine and backed up into the road, then headed north up the island. We hadn’t gone half a mile when she turned into a neighborhood whose homes sat on the edge of a network of charming canals. I had visited Sanibel and Cayo Costa before, but not Pine Island. It was peaceful and quiet, sleepy. Ellie turned into the driveway of a small gray cottage. A well-ordered flower bed lay along the front porch and two healthy palm trees stood at the left corner.

  “Have you lived here long?” I asked.

  “My previous career had me away for a long time. But I grew up on the island. It called me back.”

  We stepped out of the car, and Ellie led me through the front door into a living room with a vaulted ceiling and exposed rafters. Across the floor, a small dining table sat near the rear sliding door at the end of a shotgun kitchen.

  Ellie didn't have the door shut before a dog barked and bolted from its bed near the table. The Jack Russell Terrier made several slow revolutions around me with his nose at my ankles and his little body tensed. He growled once, huffed after that, and then sat down and looked up at me.

  “Citrus,” Ellie said. “This is Ryan. Ryan, Citrus.”

  Before I could react, the dog suddenly bounced off the ground and up to my chest like he was spring-loaded, managing to lick me on my chin before falling back to the ground, where he sat staring at me, his tail cleaning the floor.

  “And now you’re now a full-on member of the club,” Ellie said.

  “Does he let anybody join?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Bummer.”

  I followed her into the kitchen where she indicated to the table. “Have a seat. Can I get you something to drink?” she asked.

  “No, thanks.”

  Ellie slid the rear door back, and Citrus bounced through the tiny yard and went flying into the canal. I stared after him, somewhat dumbfounded.

  Ellie smiled. “He’s got his own ramp along the seawall to get back up. I’ll be right back.”

  She disappeared around a corner and down a short hallway, returning with a file folder. She set it on the table and settled into a chair across from me. “I read your after-action report on the gold mine Fagan established in Costa Rica,” she said. “He’s some kind of monster.”

  “That’s a nice way of putting it,” I said. “I was told that you have a history with one of Fagan’s potential networks?”

  “I do,” she said. “At least, we think so. As you know, Fagan is notoriously difficult to track. He’s an expert at working under multiple layers of identities and building networks of people around him that allow him to keep his hands clean. I’ve spent the last two months studying his file and looking for him. I can say that his direct involvement in that gold mine was unprecedented. You indicated in your report that Fagan told you he owed someone a lot of money?”

  I nodded. “Whoever it was, Fagan said it wasn’t the kind of man you want to be in the hole with. Any ideas now on who he may have been talking about?”

  She shook her head. “None. Mostly because we don’t know what he was doing before he went to Costa Rica. MI-6 captured him on video in South Sudan, meeting with a regional warlord. But the agent who captured the video was there in a different capacity and didn’t know who was in the video. An analyst just happened to cross-reference the image against what was in their database. By the time everyone realized who it was, Fagan was gone without a trace. That was four years ago. And that’s literally all we have.”

  “So what is this potential network you mentioned?”

  “A few months back, right around the time you bumped into Fagan in Costa Rica, I was in Mexico tracking down a suspect in the Tampa bombing. A man by the name of Pavel Petronovich—the Mexicans called him El Oso—was supplying one of the cartels with weapons.”

  “I remember reading about that.” One of central Mexico’s most ruthless cartels, Colonia Nueva Generació, had recently and violently switched leadership. Petronovich, who had been supplying the cartel with weapons from North Africa for years, fell out of favor with the new leader and escaped the country. Days prior, a homemade bomb was placed on a city transport bus in downtown Tampa. The bomb erupted just as the bus was passing Lykes Gaslight Park, sending hundreds of nails and ball bearings hurtling outward at blinding speeds. The act of terrorism resulted in over a dozen deaths and nearly a hundred additional casualties. “Wasn’t Pavel’s son the one who bombed the bus in Tampa?”

  “Yes,” Ellie said. “Peter. I finally caught up to him in Fort Myers, just before another bomb of his exploded in the River District.”

  “Wait,” I said. “You’re the agent who caught the Tampa bomber?”

  “Yes.”

  Damn.

  Somehow I had failed to make the connection. As I reviewed the case from Brad’s house this morning, Ellie’s name had rung familiar, but I didn’t place it with the agent who had brought down the Tampa bomber.

  “Apparently, there was some bad blood between Peter and his father,” Ellie continued. “We found Pavel dead in a cabin out past Everglades City. Peter had killed him for reasons he still won’t speak of.”

  “So are you thinking that Fagan is trying to weasel into Pavel’s vacant position?”

  “Yes. That’s precisely what we think. Although we don’t have much to go on.”

  “What do you have?” I asked.

  “After Pavel left Mexico, Colonia Nueva Generación had to find a new weapons supplier. With its change in leadership, the cartel has become especially ruthless in their region. Every new town or village they overtake, they recruit, by appeal or force, more young men to join their ranks. It’s not all that different from how ISIS plowed through the Middle East. And that growth in their ranks means a greater need for guns.”

  A scratch came at the back door. Citrus was staring at h
is owner through the glass.

  “One second,” she said and stood up. She opened the back door and stepped outside. I heard the squeak of the faucet just before water streamed through the hose. Ellie picked up the end and sprayed down her delighted dog with fresh water. After turning the water off, Citrus found a dry spot in the grass, lay down, and flipped over, letting the sun dry his belly. Ellie came back in and slid the door shut.

  “Sorry,” she said. “He’s like a toddler sometimes.”

  “No problem,” I said as she sat back down.

  “So,” she continued, “after Fagan escaped Costa Rica, my team and a team at Langley were given the task of finding him. We’re agreed that Fagan has built a working relationship with Rafael Félix, the new leader of Colonia Nueva Generación, and that Fagan is in the process of bringing guns into Mexico.”

  “It would fit his M.O.,” I said.

  “It would. In the past, Fagan has been rumored to be the primary weapons supplier for insurgent groups in North Africa. But then somehow he falls into substantial debt with someone and uses the gold mine to pay it off. When he resurfaces it only makes sense that he would go back to what he knows best.” Ellie paused. “Was the gold mine as bad as I’ve heard?”

  “Worse,” I said. “Fagan has absolutely no regard for human life at any level. He had kids working there. His guards raped the women and murdered anyone who didn’t get the work done to their standard.”

  Ellie sighed heavily.

  “What makes you think Fagan had established a relationship with the cartel?”

  “Two separate contacts, one in Tripoli and another in Sierra Leone, have both confirmed that they have seen Fagan in recent weeks. These are men who make their livelihood in the black markets but have spoken to CIA agents on the ground in Africa. They said Fagan was asking around about cargo ships going across the Atlantic. We have also discovered a series of phone calls from Zacatecas, Mexico, to an encrypted number in Sierra Leone.” Ellie shrugged. “It fits.”

  “I saw in the case notes this morning that you think Fagan will need someone with technical connections to successfully pull off a large shipment of weapons.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Moving weapons sounds simple enough—acquire them, transport them to a port, pay port officials enough to look the other way, then get your cargo off to the port of call, and you’re done. But under pressure from places like the UN and the IMF, governments have become more stringent in putting in safeguards against port-based illegal activity. Fagan isn’t going to be able to do what he wants without having someone that can bypass and trick the security software. Getting a shipping container full of rifles on a freighter isn’t as easy as it used to be.”

  “Any ideas who Fagan might get to do that?” I asked.

  “Now, yes. I think you may have supplied the missing piece.”

  I wasn’t expecting that. “How so?”

  Ellie slid a lock of hair behind her ear and opened the file in front of her. She tugged out a piece of paper and slid it over to me. It was a still shot of the video image Amy Jensen had found of Fagan.

  “Because of the security footage of Fagan in Rotterdam,” Ellie said. “He was coming out of the Maastoren, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “There are forty-forty floors in the Maastoren—over three hundred businesses operate from there. One of them happens to be a software firm called Lukana. Lukana is the firm that won the contract and designed the software that provides security safeguards against illegal cargo.”

  I was starting to get the picture. “So you think Fagan tried to find someone inside Lukana to help him get his guns onto a freighter.”

  “Exactly,” she said. “All the NATO and IMF restrictions have done is to move the corruption up a level. It’s harder to bribe certain port officials now, but you can offer a software developer a small stack of cash to override the safeguards and change the manifests.”

  “Any idea who Fagan was specifically targeting?”

  “Not yet. Lukana utilizes two floors in the Maastoren. They have over three hundred employees. The next step is for your team and my team to start combing through their employee records to see if we can find someone that fits our profile. One of Lukana’s employees was arrested earlier this year for overriding some protocols for a mafia boss in Lisbon trying to get some kidnapped girls onto a freighter. That tells us that there are clearly people inside Lukana who are willing to do this kind of thing for the right price.”

  Ellie’s brows lowered and her expression grew more serious. “Did I hear correctly that Fagan sent someone to get the drop on you a couple of nights ago?”

  “You did hear correctly. That’s the working assumption, anyway. We got the guys who tried, but not before they made fast work of my Gibson.”

  “You live on a houseboat?” she asked.

  “I do.”

  “Fu and Gloria live on a Gibson, too,” she said. “Down at the marina.”

  “They seem like good people,” I said.

  She smiled. “They are that.”

  We both stood up. “I’ll send you everything we have on Lukana,” she said. “Since this is the lead we’ve been looking for, I hope we can make some progress over the next few days.” The resolve in her eyes was strong. “I want to get this guy and string him up.”

  “Me too,” I said.

  Ellie opened the door and called her dog. Citrus obeyed slowly and plopped lazily onto his bed beside the table. She turned back to me. “You mentioned that you haven’t been here before. If you want, I’ll take you up island and show you around before I get you back to your boat. There’s no place like Pine Island.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “I’ll take you up on that.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Edward Latham stepped across the hot sugar white sand and waded into the surf until the water reached past his chest and to his neck, where it lapped at the bottom of his chin. He took in a deep breath, lifted his feet, and sank beneath the surface. The crystal clear water covered his head, and he opened his eyes and swam down, relishing the cool feel of the water on his warm skin.

  A French angelfish swam by, nervously darting past as Edward’s body rolled forward. Two meters away a rainbow parrotfish nibbled on the algae growing across a low ridge of coral. The fish was stunning: green scales outlined in a bright orange and fins that reflected orange, pink, and bright turquoise.

  Edward loved the natural beauty of the island. Being here placed an entirely unfamiliar world before him. Instead of a land of concrete, stoplights, and pollution, the island offered the quiet and calm that he wished could be the entirety of the rest of his life.

  But that, of course, was all that it was: a wish. He had a career, a 401K to look after, and fatherly responsibilities to attend to.

  Going on holiday was just that: going on holiday. A brief reprieve from the business and tyranny of bills, mortgages, and college funds. Edward did not happen to find himself among the lucky few who got to call this place home.

  His lungs were beginning to stress, and the depleting availability of oxygen called him back to the surface. His head broke the water’s surface, and he took in a deep breath as his feet found the bottom again and he worked his way back to the beach.

  He wiped the water from his eyes and blinked several times as he waited for the mild sting from the salt to disappear. Rory, his thirteen-year-old son, was standing next to the beach umbrella. His towel was draped over his arm, and his ball cap sat low over his eyes. Rory’s lean muscles and golden skin strongly favored the genetics passed down through his mother over that of his pasty father. Adding to the contrast was Edward’s physique, itself a clear testament to his sedentary lifestyle and his ritualist affection for morning doughnuts.

  “Rory,” Edward said, “are you leaving?”

  “I’m tired. I think I may have gotten too much sun. If it’s all right, I’ll just grab a cab back to the beach house. I want to take a nap in the air conditioning.”

&nbs
p; He looked down the beach. The sun was trending toward the west, but still high in the sky. People on holiday remained scattered along the beach, some in the surf, some laying out, others consuming refreshments beneath the shade of a tiki hut nearer to the parking lot.

  “That’s fine,” he replied. “I suppose I’ll stay for a while longer. Do you still have your billfold and your key?”

  “I do.”

  “I’ll meet you back there after a while.”

  Rory leaned down and grabbed his water bottle before turning and sluggishly working his way to the parking lot.

  Edward looked down and examined his arms and ample midsection. His skin was already an angry red. He hadn’t taken advantage of the umbrella the way he probably should have. He was going to pay for that tomorrow. And most likely the day after as well. He sat back into the sand and looked out over the azure water breaking calmly over the beach.

  He was glad that Rory had come with him. He was trying to make the boy’s time here as fun as he could. Edward had to basically threaten the hack that was his ex-wife to allow their son to come on the trip. She got him fifty weeks out of the year; the least she could do was let the boy spend a few days with his old man catching some rays and enjoying new kinds of food.

  They had been on the island for three days now, and Edward had tried to make it as fun as he could. He paid for Rory to go parasailing, scuba diving, and even set him up on a guided hiking expedition through the rainforest. Edward had not done any of those things with him—he wasn’t the physical type and his feet hurt with too much activity. He had never played English football or rugby or tennis as a child and never did anything more physical as an adult than walking from his car to the elevator and back again at the end of the day. He knew that somewhere deep inside, Rory resented him for that. Edward wanted to be a good father. But some whispering, haunting voice deep inside told him he never would be the kind of man that Rory needed.

  He heard the soft rub of feet punching into the sand behind him. “Forget something?” he asked over his shoulder.