In the cabin below, Parker shoved his bag onto the bench in the galley and sat down. Keeping an eye on the stairs, he fired off a quick text to Blunt, thanking him for his assistance. The ride to Miami wouldn’t take much longer than three hours and then Parker could return to Washington to sort out the mystery behind the attack.
As promised, Captain Slater joined Parker on the boat, lumbering down the steps with a black cane, which was topped with an ornate bronze carving of a skull. When Slater reached the bottom, he clamped down on the tip of his pipe and stared out the window.
“Ready to set sail?” Slater asked.
“Sail? I thought—”
“Calm down, sailor. It’s just an expression. But I still need you to give me a hand up top to shove off.”
“Of course,” Parker said, jumping to his feet. He followed closely behind Slater up the steps.
“You ever been deep sea fishin’?” Slater asked.
“I’m not much of an angler.”
“Prefer guns, do ya?”
“Not if I can help it,” Parker said.
Slater reached the top deck before spinning around to face Parker. The captain eyed his passenger for a moment.
“What?” Parker finally asked, interrupting the uncomfortable silence.
“I’m just wonderin’ what kinda man are you?”
Parker grinned wryly. “The kind that’ll save your life.”
“I’d rather just hope we don’t come to that.”
The two men worked together to release the vessel from the dock before Slater fired up the engine. As they chugged through the harbor, Slater received waves from everyone as he passed. Parker, who was next to the captain, stared in disbelief.
“You’re like some kind of celebrity around here, aren’t you?” Parker asked.
“Almost as old as the island itself, if you believe some of these knuckleheads around here.”
Parker nodded. “So, how do you know Senator Blunt?”
“The man likes to fish, but more importantly, he likes to catch. That’s why he hired me on his first fishing trip down here several decades ago. To be honest, I don’t remember the year, but I do remember him hauling in a fifty-three-pound Dorado on our first venture together. Blunt’s been hooked ever since.”
Parker smiled. “Somehow that doesn't surprise me.”
After motoring through the channel, Slater opened up the motor in the open sea. They bounced along for a half-hour before Parker noticed a flare streaking across the sky.
“Did you see that?” Parker asked.
Slater nodded. “Unfortunately.”
“Why unfortunately?”
“Because we have to stop, which eats into my time on this favor I’m doin’ for Blunt.”
Parker knit his eyebrows together. “You don’t have to stop, do you? I mean, there are other boats out here.”
“We’re the closest and we’re obligated to at least see what’s going on out here,” Slater said as he studied the boat through his binoculars. “Besides, I know the guy who run that charter boat. I’d never forgive myself if I didn’t help him and somethin’ happened to him.”
“I don’t know about this,” Parker said.
“You spooks and your damn conspiracies,” Slater said. “Simmer down now and let me handle this.”
A few minutes later, Slater maneuvered the Manta Ray up next to the distressed ship and idled the engine. On the other boat, a bikini-clad woman clutched her hands against her chest as she leaned forward on the railing on the starboard side.
“Thank you so much for stopping,” she said. “I was starting to wonder if anyone saw my flares in broad daylight.”
“It was hard to miss,” Slater said. “So, what seems to be the problem? Where’s Captain Kensington?”
“That’s why I fired off the flare,” she said. “He seems to have suffered a heart attack. He needs medical attention and we need someone to transport us out of here.”
Slater nodded. “Let me come take a look. I’m a trained paramedic.”
“A jack of all trades,” Parker said.
“You stay calm,” Slater said softly.
Parker pursed his lips and cocked his head to one side. “I’ll be fine as soon as I realize this isn’t some ploy to kill me.”
Slater rolled his eyes and sighed. “Just stay put and don’t do anything stupid. Better yet, don’t do anything at all.”
The captain lumbered toward the other ship. After he flung his leg over the railing and climbed aboard the boat, he glanced at the woman.
“Where’s Kensington?”
She pulled out a gun and gestured for Slater to have a seat.
“Aww, shit,” Slater said. “What have I gotten myself into?”
“We have no issue with you,” said a man as he ascended the stairs. Once Slater locked eyes with the man, the captain moaned.
“What’s this all about?”
“We just want your passenger.”
“Which one?” Slater asked. “I’ve got dozens of them below deck. It’s a whole big troop from Texas. They’re all carrying too.”
The man didn’t flinch. “Send over Agent Parker and we’ll let you be on your way.”
“Parker, now’d be a good time to show off those shooting skills of yours,” Slater said.
Parker remained tucked away, listening to the conversation from below deck. “You’ll have to come get me.”
“Or I’ll just shoot this old man right here, the only one who probably knows how to operate a sea-faring vessel between the two of you,” the man replied. “His blood will be on your hands.”
Parker glanced around the cabin and didn’t see a readily-available avenue of escape. He sighed and slowly climbed the stairs, confident the man would make good on his promise to kill the captain.
“Okay, I’m coming,” Parker said.
Slater grunted. “Why you yellow-bellied—”
The man pistol-whipped the captain, rendering him unconscious as he crumpled to the floor.
“Come on over here,” the woman said. “And we’ll let the old man live.”
Parker raised his hands as he stepped over the railing, joining the duo on their boat. The woman kept her gun trained on Parker, while the man hoisted Slater’s limp body back onto the Manta Ray.
“Come with me,” the man said as he turned his attention to Parker. “I have a special place for you.”
Chapter 6
Punta Cana, Dominican Republic
BEN LEVINE REMOVED his shirt before easing into a lounge chair situated beneath the shade of a palm tree. Less than fifty meters in front of him, the Atlantic’s waves rhythmically crashed the beach before receding back to the ocean. Children and lovers alike pranced along the shore, smiling and laughing in the warm sunshine. He still winced whenever he heard one of them shriek, even if he knew the shouts weren’t conjured up from a feeling of terror.
A few days earlier, Levine had been aboard the cruise ship that Alsheri targeted. His survival was no accident, undoubtedly the result of his extensive training as a Mossad operative, though he did have plenty of good fortune. However, he couldn’t help but feeling a tinge of guilt as he reached for his piña colada and glanced down at the identification of the man he’d watched die in the water. Everything had happened so fast.
A woman wearing a bathing suit that left little to the imagination spread out her towel on the chair next to him and then took a seat. She took her time rubbing suntan lotion across her already-bronzed skin. Levine pushed his sunglasses further up on his face, ignoring the woman’s obvious attempt to get his attention. When he didn’t give her the satisfaction she sought by enticing him to gawk at her, she got up and walked over to him before sitting down at the end of his chair.
“Would you mind?” she asked, holding out her lotion.
Levine sighed and shrugged. Why not?”
She smiled and giggled. “You’d be the first to turn me down.”
“You may wish you’d asked someon
e else tomorrow,” Levine said. “My brother asked me to spread lotion on him once, but regretted it less than twenty-four hours later when his girlfriend asked him if he’d contracted some sort of sun poisoning disease. That’s how he got the nickname Splotch.”
She hesitated. “Where did you grow up?”
“Southern California,” he lied. “You?”
“All over,” she said, turning around and exposing her back to him.
Levine wasn’t sure if she was giving him instructions on how to apply the lotion or if she was answering his question. “Were you a military brat?”
“Might as well have been,” she said as Levine detected a hint of an accent in her voice. “My father was in international finance. We went wherever the market was hot, which usually correlated with warm weather, too.”
Levine finished smearing the lotion all over the woman’s back. He leaned back and reached for a towel to wipe the grease off his fingers. When he did, she extended her right arm, her hand wielding a knife, and whipped it toward him. Levine expected the move and rolled over, dodging the blade. As she spun around to face him, Levine grabbed his towel and used it to ensnare her right arm. He wrapped the cloth around her wrist, forcing her to drop the weapon. Then he knelt and snatched it off the sand while he clung to her.
“I’ll scream,” she said in a hushed tone.
Levine scanned the area. No one was even paying them any attention. He sighed and dropped his shoulders, signaling that she could relax. That’s when he struck.
He jammed the knife into her throat, followed by the towel to sop up the blood. She clutched at her throat, unable to speak with severed vocal cords. Levine eased her face down onto her lounge chair and then jammed the knife through the mesh material and into her chest twice more. Within seconds, her body fell limp.
Levine wiped the knife clean then placed it beneath her along with her beach bag and cell phone. He donned a pair of sunglasses and tugged the baseball hat down low on his forehead before leaving the area. As he walked away, he discreetly scanned the beach once more. Nobody even glanced in his direction.
Once he returned to his room, he locked the door behind him and then leaned against it, sliding to the floor. He exhaled as his nerves began to calm down.
How did they find me? How did anyone even know where I was?
A million other questions flooded his mind. He wondered if perhaps the man whose identity he’d stolen was also a criminal. That scenario seemed unlikely.
During the fleeting moments after the explosion on the cruise ship, he had realized that the target wasn’t the U.S. Secretary of State. He was the target. Or maybe his contact was. Either way, someone knew about their meeting and went to great lengths to make sure it didn’t happen and that nobody even suspected the attack was about anything other than killing Secretary Hatcher. Based on the manifest compared with survivors, she was among the dead. So was the CIA agent Levine was meeting. Now, whoever had orchestrated the attack was cleaning up loose ends. And they weren’t about to stop pursuing him either, not after what he’d just done. Killing an asset in broad daylight was risky, but unavoidable. However, the move would only enlarge the target on his back.
Levine pondered his remaining options. The most obvious one was still the one that frightened him the most: report to his superiors what he’d learned. His reluctance to share this with the higher-ups at Mossad was how this fiasco started in the first place.
In hindsight, maybe it wouldn’t have been such a bad move.
But that didn’t matter anymore. He couldn’t go back now. That would make him seem guilty, almost as if it was his only option, a roll of the dice. But Levine resisted the urge. He never suspected this much trouble would follow him, not after what happened in the Freeport harbor. When he closed his eyes, he saw the entire scene unfolding in slow motion—the loss of balance as the deck shook from the blast, passengers screaming as they tumbled into the water, ringing in his ears as he hurtled overboard, an impaled man gasping for breath as he was suspended just a few feet above the water’s surface. When Levine splashed down, he looked up and noticed the wallet floating peacefully in the water. That’s how he became Edward Rodriguez.
Tethered to his new identity, Levine contemplated how to navigate the minefield before him. Misfortune—or missteps—resulted in a mess he needed to dig himself out of.
The meeting with Darryl Oliver aboard the cruise ship wasn’t part of Levine’s original plan back when he first stumbled across the fateful information. Upon intercepting a communique between a high-ranking American official and a former Mossad agent who’d gone rogue, Levine decided to investigate the matter on his own. After months of tracking the rogue agent, Levine had become convinced that he hadn’t truly gone rogue but was instead acting on the orders of someone within Mossad, someone who could give him protection. Levine didn’t want to share the information with his superiors without knowing what he was up against, so he hired a former Israeli intelligence officer to capture the rogue agent and interrogate him. But that plan was foiled when the agent killed the hired man, leaving Levine with no other recourse but to deliver the information he’d learned directly to someone he trusted at the CIA. Darryl Oliver was that man. And now he was dead, too.
For a moment, Levine considered checking out of the hotel and disappearing into a remote part of the world. He could start over with one of his many aliases, maybe settle in an isolated village in the Andes Mountains or buy a small Tuscan villa and run a cafe. It wouldn’t be such a bad way to retire. At least he’d be alive.
But Levine couldn’t. Not just yet anyway. The information he knew couldn’t be buried in his mind, never to be thought of again. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of innocent lives were at stake. And while Levine realized he might be able to survive and go on with his life in anonymity, he couldn’t live with himself if he didn’t share what he’d learned with the proper authorities.
Levine needed a plan, and he needed one quickly.
Chapter 7
Istanbul, Turkey
WITHIN HOURS OF LANDING in Instanbul, Black and Shields put their plan in motion to rendezvous with the Alsheri operative Bahiri Zahid. In the aftermath of the cruise ship attack, Zahid had become a quasi-celebrity among terrorist groups. His appearances on several Muslim extremist websites bragging about killing several dozen “infidels” earned him a nickname that roughly translated into “Admiral Death.” Publicly, however, he maintained a low profile, his whereabouts unknown until a well-placed asset reported to the CIA that Zahid was traveling to Istanbul. He was scheduled to be there for a few days where he was meeting with a handful of other lieutenants from Alsheri to discuss the organization’s next attack.
While killing Zahid would be a signature victory for Noah Young’s fledgling presidency, Black and Shields were more concerned with learning who leaked the information to Zahid. And they needed sufficient proof to finger the traitor. Accusing someone of treason required more than circumstantial evidence and hearsay. Blunt wanted to be able to “nail the bastard to the wall” as he put it before sending off his two Firestorm agents.
Black intended to make Zahid divulge the name of his contact in Washington through a variety of persuasive methods, none of which Black would want performed upon himself. But that was something he wouldn’t have to concern himself with until after the most daunting task had been accomplished: apprehending Zahid and moving him to a private location.
Black planned to pose as an arms dealer from South Africa, leveraging one of Zahid’s former classmates from Cal Tech to set up the discussion. While they were in the air, Shields spoofed the classmate’s number and texted Zahid to see if he’d be interested. He enthusiastically responded, telling his friend that his timing couldn’t have been any more perfect since his next big operation necessitated much greater firepower than he’d used in the past.
The initial meeting was scheduled to take place the following evening at a cafe in the city’s Sultanahmet district. Just a few short
blocks from the Grand Bazaar, the public place served as a safe place as well as one that could enable them to disappear and escape quickly if necessary. Black and Shields spent most of their day scoping out the establishment and searching for all possible pitfalls. Once they were satisfied that the cafe was safe, they retreated to their hotel room to make final preparations for their meeting.
“Nervous?” Shields asked as she tested out the video feed from Black’s glasses.
“Not really,” Black said. “If I’m nervous about anything, it’s about who’s really behind this and how high up this goes within our own government.”
Shields sighed and pushed her chair away from the table. “The thing that I just can’t figure out is why anyone would want to kill Secretary Hatcher.”
Black huffed a short breath through his nose before answering. “You’re seeing the same thing I am right now. All these extremist groups are using this as a rallying cry. They assassinated a top U.S. government official. That’s a major coup for them. And they’re going to leverage it into a recruiting tool now.”
“Yeah, but she’s not even all that well known, even within our own borders. I doubt half of our country even knew her name until she was killed in the attack.”
Black chuckled and shook his head. “More than half the country probably couldn’t name more than two or three presidents who pre-dated Lincoln.”
“True. I will admit that the bar is low. But our collective lack of awareness when it comes to our government leaders makes this that more of a head-scratcher. Most people will probably forget her name by this time next week.”
“Hopefully, we’ll be able to go straight to the source and get all the answers we want from Zahid,” Black said.
Honorable Lies (A Titus Black Thriller Book 6) Page 4