The Last Operation (The Remnants of War Series, Book 1)

by Patrick Astre

  "I can't let it go Kate. Too many people have died, too many lives ended. If I stop now, none of it will have any meaning. There will never be peace. It will haunt us for the rest of our lives until one day it reaches out to kill us."

  "All I know Richard is that I can't lose you. Not now, not ever. If something happened to you, it will happen to me also. If they kill you, they kill me also. You remember that always. It's not just your life you're safeguarding it's mine also. I'm not capable of living without you anymore."

  She turned her eyes away and rested her head on his chest. She could feel the beating of his heart through the curtain of her blonde hair. She raised her lips as Richard enfolded her in his arms.

  The storm passed leaving behind a steaming jungle thick with the smells of decaying vegetation, ocean water and rich loamy soil. Daniels left Kate sleeping in the cabin, cool with the shade of the overhanging oak. He walked to the dock and the edge of the island. Soft grass and mud oozed between his bare toes and it felt good.

  It came to him slowly as he sat, his bare feet dangling in the muddy brackish water. He knew it had grown beyond his abilities to handle and safeguard the people he held dear. It was time to act, to strike back. Suddenly he knew what he had to do, had known all along. It formed unbidden in his mind, just waiting for his conscious thoughts. He got up and looked around as if saying goodbye, for a while. Then he turned and headed toward the cabin to talk to Kate.

  Chapter 45

  Puffy fragments of clouds rolled across the horizon among patches of bright blue sky. It seemed as if the very heavens were moving. Light from the setting sun painted the underside of the clouds a bright orange-red in the late afternoon. The view from the panoramic windows of the 45th floor of the new Federal office building was simply magnificent, thought William Taylor.

  It'd taken over twelve years for him to reach this level. The entire floor was devoted to the newly formed Federal organization he headed. His personal office was as sumptuous as any CEO of a Fortune 500 Corporation. The taxpayers wouldn't mind since even though he was a public servant, the furnishings had been paid out of his own funds. Everything from bleached oak floors partially covered by a handcrafted Indian rug, to the custom designed desks, chairs and leather sofa with an original Matisse hanging on the wall above it, had been paid with Taylor's private funds. The scope and source of these funds would have been sufficient to bankroll most third world countries and possibly a few developed ones as well. Throughout South America, the power of the organizational alliances controlled by William Taylor's secret illicit groups, drew funds out of every secretive transaction that took place. Every time illegal drugs were sold, from multi-million dollar shipments smuggled into the US to the hapless junkie buying nickel bags of Coke or "B" rock crack, from bales of high quality Sensimilla Marijuana to individual joints cut with Oregano, from $5 and $10 bills to entire suitcases stuffed with $1,000 bills, a little slice of that cash found its way into the coffers of William Taylor's organization.

  But it did not end there. Like the exponential growth of compound interest or a snowball gathering bulk, there'd been a spread of influence and collateral profits from arms and drug sales to scattered groups in all corners. A variety of extremists and a host of unsavory and transitory governments throughout the unsettled corners of the globe, all brought cash, power and influence to be built upon and multiplied. Banks and financial organizations throughout the world and other varied depositories of global wealth, all had huge accounts that were fed, used and linked by Taylor's organization.

  Now William Taylor was on the verge of the greatest coup of all. He felt as if he stood on the very top of a mountain at the pinnacle of the world. He was about to soar on the power he'd created over the last dozen years.

  In less than three weeks, the Senate would confirm his appointment. The office he had pretty much inspired with spider webs of influence, power, money, deceit and even covert murder, that new office would be his. It didn't seem like much at first glance, but the new cabinet level office known as ICAG, Intelligence Coordination & Action Group, combined elements of the Office of Homeland Security, CIA, ATF and FBI under one command. It opened new avenues, doors that had previously been inaccessible.

  Taylor had just ended a meeting with Conboy. The second phase of the Bio-Enhancement project was due to begin in thirty days. This time they had learned lessons they would apply well. There would be no failures like that which occurred with Lieutenant Gilbert. Not enough surveillance had been in place and that young technician had betrayed them. No matter, the error was corrected and covered. The young man had paid with his life and his remains had fed the voracious reptiles of the Everglades.

  He watched a plane coming in to Reagan Airport, a silver American Airlines bird, its gleaming underbelly tinged with gold and red of the setting sun. The Washington monument and the Capitol Dome stood clearly visible and if he looked over to the East, the Potomac twinkled with reflected light on the afternoon chop.

  He held his hand out, fingers splayed until the tips came in contact with the double plated safety glass. Taylor felt as if could reach through the window and hold the national treasures he knew he was destined to soon control.

  But the thought of the Everglades had been unsettling. It was a worm of doubt, a tendril that every once in a while insinuated itself in his thoughts. Daniels remained the only setback, minor as it was, the only barrier that he'd been unable to eliminate along the way of his well crafted planning.

  They'd failed to catch Richard Daniels, and the three or four characters he was associated with, the only ones who had knowledge of his operations.

  Logically, he told himself, he should not be concerned. Conboy had six teams operating around Everglades City, Naples and the surrounding areas of South Florida. Everything from surveillance to direct covert action was in place. But it seemed as if Daniels and those people had disappeared from the face of the earth. Conboy's operatives had conducted a number of searches in the vast swamp jungle with no results. He would need large amounts of manpower, more then he could muster at this stage without arousing hosts of questions.

  Meanwhile Daniels was still loose out there. But what could he prove? That was the real question. Without specific and undeniable proof, Daniels could be passed off as another deranged right or left wing (the actual orientation didn't matter) combat veteran that America produced periodically.

  Still, doubts continued to gnaw at William Taylor. Twice Daniels had escaped his fate. The last time, he'd managed to eliminate Roland Washington and Hart. No matter, they had been expandable and he was well pleased with Rollie's replacement: A lethal, SEAL-trained killer with a touch of the psychopath that would come in useful when Taylor needed him.

  Chapter 46

  As William Taylor lost himself in the admiration of the view from his new seat of power, Richard Daniels studied a labyrinth of maps laid out on the field table in front of him.

  He was using the "Long House" in Spirit Wolf's camp. The house once served as a large communal room for the now extinct, Calusa tribe. It had been rebuilt a half dozen times in the last thirty or so years after suffering everything from floods and hurricanes to fires and human mischief. This time it'd been redone with a base of stones and cinder blocks brought in from Everglades City one small boatload at a time by tribal members. None outside of a handful of trusted Seminoles, Daniels and a few others could have located this camp.

  As Daniels studied the maps with their narrow intersecting lines, drops of sweat beaded on his forehead and ran to the tip of his nose. The odor of dried earth, damp vegetation and the steam of tropical jungles permeated the atmosphere. Insects buzzed outside in clouds of myriad numbers and amphibian reptiles croaked and chirped and splashed in the dense vegetation overlaying the swamp. Outside the door, the black Florida panther licked her fur in long sinuous strokes, awaiting the coming darkness when her eyes would glow in the night as she hunted.

  There would be no second chance in what Richar
d Daniels saw as his final move. In the past, with Special Forces and later, as a mercenary, he he'd been involved in both covert and overt operations that had gone wrong. Sometimes it was just bad luck, other times enemy actions that simply would not cooperate. Murphy's Law seemed to rule: If anything can go wrong, it will. All too often, he had found that there had been a flaw, a minute chink in the carefully constructed armor of planning that resulted in failed or aborted operations and consequent casualties. This operation would be different. It had to be different in the magnitude of its importance.

  If he failed, the specter of misery and violent death would continue to hover over countless thousands of lives. No one else had the background and experiences to understand the horrors that William Taylor represented.

  Without his success, all the previous deaths would never be avenged. Justice would drown, condemning Kate and the others to remain trapped in hiding within the Everglades until the arm of William Taylor's evil grew long enough to reach for them in this last refuge, or when hiding wore down their spirits, they stepped into the clutches of the traps that had been placed for them.

  If he failed he would not survive the day. There was no question on that score.

  This was going to be an operation like no other he had ever mounted. It would be an operation of guile and subterfuge with no weapons involved. There could be no room for errors or any miscalculations no matter how slight. And there was one thing he understood, one thing he had promised Kate.

  It would be his last operation.

  * * *

  The first stage began at dawn the next morning. Richard Daniels left Spirit Wolf's camp in the catamaran. Anyone who knew him would have been hard pressed to recognize him. Gone was the shaven jaw and short brush cut. He wore a newly grown beard, trimmed medium and neat. His hair had sprouted, long and slightly curled. It was cut in a Sharpton-style Mullet. Hair and beard were dyed blonde with streaks of gray. He'd stayed out of the sun the last few weeks and augmented the effect with cosmetic skin whitening. He looked like a rather handsome businessman who had stayed in the office too long and needed more time outdoors.

  Daniels ran the catamaran at three quarter throttle through the wide deep canals bordered by islands that rose out of the water crowned by emerald vegetation and spidery Mandrakes. Whenever he could, he chose the small tight canal, slowing considerably and weaving his way through networks of Mangrove roots buried deep under the water and rising to the surrounding land like stretched black and white skeletons. But the course remained always west, toward the Gulf of Mexico.

  The sun rose and sent furnace blasts of gold ray filtering through the overhanging branches. As Daniels approached the Gulf, the surroundings changed to fields of saw grass. The clear burning light of the sun poured into the fields of grass and was lost there, soaked up and never given back. Here and there water flashed and glinted as Herons and Turkey Buzzards on Saw Palmettos flew away at the thunderous approach of Daniels' catamaran. He stopped and applied a thick sunscreen and put on a wide brimmed bush hat tied under the chin.

  He continued until he was a bare two miles from the open waters of the Gulf and turned South on a wide channel, heading toward Ponce De Leon Bay and Cape Sable at the very Southern tip of Florida and the Everglades. Daniels pressed on, crossing Ponce De Leon Bay. When night caught up with him, he made camp at the Eastern end of the bay, eight miles from the town of Flamingo at the end of the Everglades, facing the Keys across twelve miles flanked by Florida Bay.

  At sunrise the next day, he motored the catamaran up the canal that ran parallel to Flamingo. He stopped at a wide ramshackle house some forty feet from the edge of the canal and tied the boat to a protruding pontoon dock made of Cypress logs lashed together and driven deep in the oozing bottom mud.

  A man came out of the house. He wore cutoffs and tank top. Large hairy belly protruded over the shorts and he walked with a limp. From inside the house came squealing sounds of kids playing. Smells of frying onions drifted out from the windows facing the dock as the man greeted Daniels.

  "Mr. Daniels, it is good to see you."

  Before Daniels could reply, the man grasped his hand, shook it once and pulled Daniels in a great bear hug. It took Daniels a few moments to disentangle himself from the wide arms.

  "Good to see you, Santos," said Daniels, "Maria and the kids are well?"

  The man stepped back, keeping both hands on Daniels' shoulders while locking his eyes on his.

  "They are well since you and Carlos pulled us out of Cuba."

  Daniels shrugged, "It was business."

  The man smiled as he replied. "No, it wasn't business. Business was those two Russian Cabrones, those defectors you were paid to smuggle out. Maria, me, the kids, that was your heart that did that. We owe you our life. Those pigs would have killed us. You knew that."

  Daniels shook his head and shrugged. He wanted to get out before the wife and the kids and the tears started in.

  "Look Santos, I'm on a tight schedule. I have to be a thousand miles away by tomorrow."

  "Of course, of course," said the man as he started toward a building the size of a two-car garage and made of rusting corrugated steel. He walked rapidly in spite of his limp and kept a steady stream of chatter.

  "I got the request from Carlos—such a small thing for the men who saved us all. We followed Carlos' instructions exactly. We used the money wired in, opened the account in the name Carlos gave us. The car is rented in the same name. All the papers are on the seat. Keys are in there too."

  The man swung open the creaking steel door revealing a late model rented Lincoln. Daniels shook hands with the man and was promptly pulled into another bear hug. He broke away, thanked the man again, got in the car and started it. As he pulled away, the man stopped him again.

  "There's another bag on the seat. Good Cuban pork sandwiches and fried plantains. Better than any of the crap they sell along the roads."

  Chapter 47

  Daniels drove off the property and stopped up the road to examine the documents.

  The Florida driver's license had been obtained several years ago in case of just such an emergency. The license was real even if the documentation presented to obtain the license was not. It'd been up-dated by Bobby-Ray with a photo that reflected his current appearance. Daniels was now Jon Hogden, Denmark-born naturalized citizen and president of Hogden & Derek, a Bermuda based construction company. He carried a letter of credit from a Bermuda bank and two credit cards, one in the name of Jon Hogden, the other under Hogden & Derek, Inc. Both cards and line of credit were ultimately linked to several numbered Swiss accounts through interlocking corporations that Kate had set up. Everything checked and matched and would stand scrutiny by law enforcement agencies. Nothing was linked to Richard Daniels or any of his associates. He was Jon Hogden, construction executive setting out to expand business into the mainland of the United States.

  Daniels drove the narrow two lanes road that took him out of the town of Flamingo and the Everglades. He hooked up to US1, driving south to Miami until he entered I95. He drove all day, with quick restroom and food stops. Santos had been right. The food his wife had made was as tasty as it was filling.

  It was dark when he passed the Florida border into Georgia. He kept going well into the night, stopping at a Motel 6 in North Carolina.

  He was back on I95 Northbound before dawn. He drove as steadily as the previous day and reached the outskirts of Washington DC right after nightfall.

  Daniels checked into a Marriott just inside the Virginia state line, four miles from the I95 Bridge over the Potomac into Washington. He'd reserved a room for a week and started his search the next day. He wore off-the- rack business suits and carried his papers in a small leather attaché case as he walked in the Chase banking center in DC and opened a business account under his corporate identity. Once the account was established, he had funds wired in from the Bermuda accounts.

  Armed with his cash accounts and his engineering map of Washin
gton DC and surrounding suburbs, he started visiting commercial real estate firms. It took him four days to find the right building and location. It had to meet certain criteria's as to the building itself, distance from the Potomac and layout of utilities from the engineering and infrastructures maps. He signed the lease and took possessions of the keys on the fifth day.

  As the country struggled to shake off the recession that had plagued the economy for the last few months, there were a number of commercial buildings vacant in the DC area. The one Daniels chose was a warehouse six miles from the Potomac on the outskirts of the capital just outside the DC line, on the Maryland side a few miles South of the Woodrow Wilson Memorial bridge and I95.

  The sign went up on the front of the building: Hogden & Derek. General Construction.

  Local workmen came in and performed the required modifications to the building—not all the ones required of course.

  Those could only be done by Daniels.

  Inventory came in, was stacked and placed by temporary day-workers. Large sheets of asbestos and steel construction plates and a curious length of tracked steel shaped and bent to Daniels' specifications. The last thing the workers built were two triangular and parallel cinder-block walls that jutted eight feet from the warehouse wall that abutted the office.

  Daniels himself spent the last three days doing the rest of the work, work that could not be trusted to anyone but himself even if he was able to find someone who could understand what was required.

  If his life depended on it, and it did, Daniels would do it himself.

  Once he was satisfied everything was set up correctly, he retraced his steps on I95. South—back toward Florida and the Everglades. He reached the edge of South Carolina on the first night and took a hotel room with Internet access. Using a laptop, he sent a coded message to a Bermuda number. The number went to a computer kept active 24 hours and maintained by a service. The computer received the message that triggered a program translated from codes Daniels had locked in the machine. The program forwarded a message that was picked up by Carlos via cell-phone/laptop.