“Any guess where that sleaze is headed?”
Ward shook his head.
“Not a clue. Only thing we know for sure is she’s manifested for Vancouver. That almost certainly means that she’s not headed there at all. Could be anywhere else. We’ll just have to follow and find out.” Ward looked around for a second then patted his stomach. “Where’s Cookie? I think I’ll take one of those omelets after all. Just half the size of yours, though. You trying to be the first Commander kicked out of the sub service for obesity?”
Glass just winked and shoved another big bite of egg into his mouth.
Tom Kincaid cursed under his breath as a compact car darted in front of him, cutting him off, then blowing its squeaky little horn as if it was his fault for being there. Traffic was a swirling tangle, moving in fits and starts. He hated driving in rush-hour traffic, and it was even worse in this interminable misting rain.
A buzzing from the passenger seat snatched his thoughts away from contemplation of imminent road rage. He reached across the seat of the Chevy Suburban and grabbed the cell phone.
“Kincaid here,” he growled irritably.
“Surprised you’re up and about this early. I thought you DEA cowboys slept ‘til noon and only got up for your manicure appointment.”
Kincaid couldn’t help but chuckle when he heard the gravelly voice of Ken Temple on the other end of the phone. His jokes might be stale but he usually brought information. Information for which Tom Kincaid was powerfully hungry.
“Yeah, that’s true. But we’re such political animals we keep D. C. time. Makes work out here tough. Have to be up by nine if you want any brownie points. I really feel sorry for those poor suckers out in Hawaii who have to...” Kincaid screeched to a stop as the light ahead of him changed to yellow and the compact’s driver slammed on her own brakes right in front of him. “Damn stupid… Hey, Ken, what are you doing disturbing my Zen-like experience with Seattle traffic?”
“Our friends Ramirez and Rashad surfaced again. One of our beat cops over in Bellevue spotted Rashad’s Beemer outside a bar. They don’t get too many all gold, low-rider Beemers in that neighborhood, I don’t guess. Anyway, he smelled something and he ran a make on it.”
Kincaid stepped on the gas as the signal changed to green then slammed on the brakes again, barely missing a rusty pick-up that was running the light from the right. Kincaid bounced off the steering wheel, shouting curses at the departing taillights that were almost hidden by the haze of blue smoke from the truck’s exhaust.
“You want to run plates? Let me give you a set of plates to run! Then I want that asshole all to myself! Son of a bitch liked to have killed me!”
“Easy, Tom. Remember your blood pressure, big guy,” Kincaid snickered, imagining the expression on the agent’s irate face. “Anyway, as I was about to say, by the time the make got back, the Beemer was gone. The cop talked to the bartender. He positively identified the two. He was bitching about the big black guy who stole the tip off the table.”
Kincaid listened, digesting the information, then asked, “Any follow up? Any idea where they are now?”
“No, we just know that they are back and moving about above ground again. We sent the make out to all the stations with orders to watch out for the pair but not to try to make any contact. They’ll surface again. It’s too hard for such a dynamic duo as they are to stay hidden for long.”
Kincaid chewed his lip for a few minutes, lost in thought.
“Guess we’ll just have to watch and wait,” he finally answered. “If they’re back above ground, they’re probably getting back in business. My gut tells me we’d better squash those two cockroaches before they get a chance to do any damage.”
Tom Kincaid’s gut had always been a very dependable compass and it was comforting to know that all that had happened to him and his Agency career had not deflected the needle a degree. All his instincts continued to scream that these two characters were the keys to deflating Juan de Santiago’s deadly business plan. And now, even as the compact car’s driver eased along for the better part of a mile at half the speed limit and with her blinker on the whole way, he found his anger with her fading. There was a far worse menace flaming up out there and he was dead certain now that he was in a prime position to stomp it out.
And he was certain that opportunity would be coming very, very soon.
Juan de Santiago sat behind the old mahogany desk in the hacienda office. The room smelled of old leather and cigar smoke and dust. The walls were lined with bookshelves filled completely with leather bound volumes of account registers documenting centuries of activities to carefully husband the soil and recording every peso touched by the rancheros.
De Santiago rarely used this room. The plush leather chairs and the heavy brass lamps were just not to his taste. What would one of his followers say if they saw him sitting here, in the master’s office? Was he merely another master, intent on exploiting the peons for his own enrichment?
The room was perfect for the task at hand. The impression of wealth and power was vital if he was to get his point across. The thick walls and the office’s isolation from the rest of the house would serve well if the message was not well received.
There was a heavy knock at the deeply carved rosewood door. Guzman entered even before de Santiago acknowledged him.
“El Jefe, the Americano is here. He demands to see you immediately.”
De Santiago smiled and spoke softly.
“Invite him in then, Guzman. Such an important man should not be kept waiting.”
Guzman looked at his leader, his face full of questions. He knew that El Jefe loathed the effete banker. He barely tolerated his presence, and would have cut his throat long before had he not required his intricate knowledge of international finance.
Guzman knew one other thing. This quiet politeness was a dangerous thing. The bodyguard shivered and was thankful he was not in the banker’s shoes this night.
Don Holbrooke shoved past Guzman and stomped into the quiet room. He was livid, shouting and waving his arms wildly.
“What is the meaning of this?”
He shook his fist at de Santiago, the affected Harvard accent he so often adopted now forgotten in his rage.
In one quick motion, Guzman reached behind his back and grabbed the hilt of the razor sharp fighting knife he kept holstered there. De Santiago expected the move and motioned subtly for him to stop before he decapitated the fool banker.
“Senor Holbrooke, my friend. Why are you so worked up?” He gestured toward one of the wine-red leather armchairs. “Come, sit. Make yourself comfortable and let us discuss your ‘problem’…whatever it might be…like civilized men.”
Holbrooke stomped his foot and glared at the rebel leader.
“I don’t need to sit and discuss any damn thing! I just want my money back! The money you stole from me! Give it back right now or you’ll be sorry!”
De Santiago repressed a chuckle at the sight of the little money-grubber so worked up. He found it droll that he had the effrontery to threaten him here in his own house.
“Would you care for a cigar? Perhaps a little cognac? We have a very fine Napoleon vintage.”
Holbrooke was consumed by his rage and de Santiago’s calm manner only made it worse. He flopped down into the offered chair, failing to see the sarcasm dripping from de Santiago’s every word.
“Juan, cut the shit. I don’t know how you figured out how to do it. I just know you did it. Now give back the money you stole or I’ll see that someone finds out where all the accounts...”
“But, Senor Holbrooke,” de Santiago interrupted. “We seem to have a bit of a problem here, my friend. Thanks to Herr Schmidt and our friends in Switzerland, we have become aware of some rather serious thievery going on here. Remember, the revolution and I are far bigger customers of his bank than are you, and that appears to have earned us a certain loyalty from the Swiss. By my accounting, you stole this money from the revolution in
the first place. Technically, I can’t steal what was rightfully mine, now can I? We have discussed this many times, my friend. I was willing to overlook some of your thieving, so long as it was under control.” As he spoke, De Santiago’s tone changed dramatically. He began to chew off and spit out every word as he rose menacingly from behind the desk and towered over the seated banker. “But your greed knows no bounds. You steal from me at every turn, and even then you are not satisfied. No! The millions are not enough for you and your voracious appetite. Now, you have to sell my secrets to El Presidente! Senor Holbrooke…or should I say, El Falcone? You are one bird that will no longer fly.”
Holbrooke dropped his jaw and stared blankly, wide-eyed, at the enraged face of Juan de Santiago. He almost seemed mesmerized by the snake-like eyes. He was too tongue-tied to deny the charge, too stunned to defend himself. He never saw de Santiago’s next subtle gesture, or notice Guzman as he slipped behind the chair with cat-like quickness, his fighting knife now unsheathed and flickering in the light.
In an amazingly quick motion, Guzman grabbed the bankers’ long white hair in his fist and yanked his head back forcefully, exposing his neck, his frantically bobbing Adam’s apple.
Holbrooke never saw the knife flash across his vision either. He felt a strange burning sensation encircle his throat. It was difficult for him to draw a breath.
He tried to speak, to try to convince El Jefe that he had no knowledge of El Falcone. All that came from his mouth was a gurgle of frothy blood.
“Now, Guzman, get the pig out of here before his filthy blood taints my home even farther than has his very presence,” de Santiago said.
Without even a glance back at the dying man, the leader strode out of the musty room and headed directly upstairs. He had a sudden irresistible urge to find Margarita, to tell her about his latest triumph, to proudly relate to her the unveiling and destruction of El Falcone.
And to have her writhing body once again working beneath him.
30
Bill Beaman slipped silently through the thick, tangled jungle undergrowth, swimming his way through the grasping limbs and vines that seemed to want to grab him and keep him from making any progress at all. Dawn was breaking over the ridge top to the east. It was getting late. The nocturnal jungle creatures were already bedded down for their day’s rest. The daytime scavengers were just beginning to stir about. The SEAL team leader looked around him and could just make out the dim forms of the rest of his team as they fanned out beside him in the half-light.
The trek from the landing zone had been grueling but uneventful, no sign of any other human beings. The six-man team had managed to trudge up the ridge and down the other side in the almost total darkness. Along about 0300, the sky darkened even more as storm clouds rolled in from the west, blotting out the stars. An hour later, the SEAL team was working its way through a full-blown rainstorm. They could barely see the trees in front of them as the driving rain relentlessly beat down on them. They were soaked to the skin in minutes. They also knew that the sudden storm would help to keep them hidden from any probing eyes that might have caught sight of them, or would mask any inadvertent sound they might make. Beaman could only hope that anyone else out here was as uncomfortable as he and his men were.
The rain turned the thin jungle soil to slimy, oozing mud beneath their boots. Between the mud and the wet vegetation, the footing quickly became impossible. Every step upward toward the top of the ridge usually led to a half-a-step slide backward. The struggle up the slope was exhausting even for the well-conditioned SEAL team.
The rain stopped just as abruptly as it had started. A fresh, cool wind blew the clouds out to the east just as the men topped the ridge and began their drop down the other side. Even with the deluge over, it was impossible to see any distance down into the valley before them. The dense vegetation, hanging low from its load of rainwater, hid everything.
Still, they made much better time as they slipped and slid down the slope with the assistance of gravity. They arrived at the edge of the clearing just as the sun broke over the top of yet another ridge that towered high in front of them.
Beaman raised his hand and pointed off in both directions, using hand signals to instruct his team on how he wanted them to fan out and scout the area. Before them, across a small clearing, bathed in the dim yellow light of the ascending sun, were the tumbled down remains of a burned out hacienda. The voracious jungle vegetation seemed to be hungrily gobbling up what was left before their eyes. Still the scene looked exactly as it had in the satellite photos. This was the place they were looking for, but it didn’t seem to be any sort of viable military target.
Nothing stirred. The place was eerily, ghostly quiet.
Chief Johnston and Broughton disappeared around to the right of the clearing, staying close enough together to cover each other as they slipped through the foliage while they used the jungle as cover in case the ruins had eyes. Dumkowski and Martinelli moved to the left and disappeared from view. Cantrell slid to a spot a few yards to the right of Beaman, then stopped short just before slipping out of the trees. He propped his M-60 in the fork of a huge mahogany tree.
Beaman reached into his haversack and pulled out the binoculars he kept there. He didn’t need them at this range, but they helped sort out the details. Being able to see even the smallest thing could sometimes make the difference between success and failure, even life and death. There was nothing obviously out of the ordinary on his first sweep of the clearing. Then, something over near the ramshackle shed caught Beaman’s eye. Something that didn’t belong there. He focused all his attention in that direction, carefully seeking out every single item as he fine-tuned the focus on the binoculars.
Finally he saw what it was that had caught his attention, something far up in the trees behind the shed. Almost totally hidden in the roots of an orchid was a small video camera, looking out over the clearing. Somebody was interested in watching what was going on out here in the midst of all this desolation, interested enough to rig and carefully hide a video camera, set to scan a lonely clearing in the middle of the jungle. Odds were it was not some nature lover hoping to see a tapir heading for water down by the river.
Beaman exhaled. The chance was remote that the camera would spy his team as they slipped through the shadows. That’s why they had not blundered out into the opening in the first place. No, the greater concern was over what other surveillance devices might be hidden around the abandoned ruins. Pressure detectors, motion sensors, laser beams; there were dozens of ways to observe unwanted and unwary guests. They would have to be even more careful from now on.
The presence of the surveillance camera did confirm one fact. This innocuous-looking clearing was likely to be just as strategic as advertised.
Beaman continued a slow, careful, tedious search around the area. As much as he wanted to charge the shack and see what secret it held, he knew it was time well spent to make sure there were no more surprises out there. He could not find another trace of recent human habitation. He trained the glasses back up in the tree just to make sure he hadn’t imagined the video camera up there. He found the orchid again, resting in the crotch of two limbs. It was a pretty flower, with white and golden blooms.
Beaman smiled as he had an odd thought. Bet Ellen Ward could identify that orchid right off, by common and scientific name. She always seemed to know those kinds of things. She had given him a guided tour of her garden the last time she and Jon had invited him over for dinner.
He zoomed the binoculars in to maximum power as he propped against a tree to steady himself. He looked at the roots of the orchid. There was the inhuman black glass eye staring coldly back at him.
Beaman slithered backward deeper into the shadows, hidden from the searching lens of the camera. He pulled the satellite transceiver from his pack and flipped the switches to bring it to life. The little green LED blinked to life, telling him that the machine was talking to the JDIA command center in San Diego. As he waite
d, he thought, Sure would be nice to have a job where all you had to do was sit back in a comfortable chair and listen out for some slob out in the jungle some place to check in. Eight hours of quiet, safe boredom, then home to a hot meal and a warm, dry bed.
Ward had been one of the ones who told Bill Beaman that he was born to be a SEAL, that if the SEALs had not existed, they would have had to invent the service for the likes of him.
He grinned as he pushed the little earpiece into his ear and tugged the tiny boom microphone around to the side of his mouth. He began talking quietly.
“Command, this is team. We are in place at the ruins. Be aware that this place is wired with video monitoring. Over.”
Beaman heard Bethea’s voice in his ear.
“Roger, team. Anything else?”
“Negative so far. Scouting the perimeter now. It took a little longer to get here than planned.”
“Understood. Bob, be very careful. We believe this might be de Santiago’s development lab. No telling what kind of force he might have there to protect it. But we need to know what’s inside.”
Beaman reflexively glanced around himself as he spoke.
“John, we don’t know if there is an ‘inside’ yet. All we’ve found so far is that ‘candid camera.’ What do you want us to do if there is an ‘inside?’”
“Just like we briefed. Get inside; find out what’s there. Grab whatever you can and get out.”
“You want this place taken down?”
“Use your discretion. If you can do it, and it makes sense, take it out. But be advised, we don’t have any other assets to hit it with. Don’t put your team at risk.”
Beaman grimaced. He dreaded hearing those words. “Use your discretion.” That was one of the things he had found it necessary to learn about working with JDIA. No simple going in, locating a solid target, blowing it up, and getting back out. So often now, they worked in gray, ill-defined areas. The burden of the decisions was on his shoulders once they had taken a look at and fully assessed whatever it was that they found when they got there.
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